Coca Cola Challenge: BOOM (3)
We are Alike team. While participating in the Start-up Lab, we accepted the Coca Cola challenge. What the company really wanted was to create an app, powered by Coca Cola, which doesn’t advertise the product directly, but in a subtler way. The target group. is 13–19 and the values that we tried to promote were three: Awareness, Live, Love. We chose this project because we find the aimed group challenging and interesting, as we still feel close to them and we can possibly understand their needs and problems.
To understand teen’s needs, preferences and problems we conducted a research and we interviewed them to have a more specific insight.
Each member of the team interviewed 10 teens, ranging from 13 to 19 years old, having a total of 50 interviews. This sample of the teen population allowed us to categorize their needs and focus on the problems they specified. The interview contained these questions:
1. What is the problem that concerns you in your everyday life?
2. How often do you deal with this problem?
3. When was the last time you had to deal with your problem?
4. What actions do you do when facing this problem?
5. Do you ever use the Internet to find solutions to your problem?
6. How? (Google, Facebook etc)
7. Did it work?
8. Which applications do you use that help you in your everyday life?
9. When and where do you use them? (home, school-unversity, street, when hanging out)
10. Do you like applications that require multi-tasking and interaction, meaning that you can use them on-the-go? (S-Health, Pokemon Go, Foursquare, Snapchat)
Here is the list with the 50 teens and their main problem in short:
We took a close look to the answers and managed to create 5 categories depending on the answers:
1. Studying/School/University/Lack of time (27/50)
2. Transportation/Public means (6/50)
3. Routine/Entertainment (10/50)
4. Communication/Contact with friends (4/50)
5. Other (Insomnia, Problems with Parents, Make-up Issues) (3/50)
• More than 50% of the teens we interviewed are facing major problems with having too much to study and too little time to do things they enjoy. Entertainment seems to be the second most popular concern of teenagers, as they would like to hang out more and study less. Transportation is an issue that can’t be solved immediately, as teens under the age of 18 cannot drive in Greece. Buses, the subway and the tram is their only option, which can be frustrating and tiring sometimes. Only 4 teens highlighted the need to communicate more with their friends. This does not seem to be a huge problem nowadays due to the development of technology and Internet’s rise. Most teens communication just fine and more than enough through social media, telephones and in person. Very gladly, only one person mentioned problems with their parents, meaning that maybe we have moved on to an era that parents and children can be allies and friends. Another teen mentioned make up as her problem, which is very logical since she’s 15 and she is now learning how to use it. Lastly, one person said insomnia is what is bothering her in her daily life, thus she is tired and cannot focus on things that matter.
• Most of the teens, mentioned that they face these problems every day or extremely too often and that they try to find solutions, but do not always succeed. Some of them try to relax by doing activities they enjoy, others chat with their friends, others watch movies, and so on.
• In addition, teens nowadays use the Internet a lot and are very familiar with its use. They seek answers to their problems by typing them on Google, they share their concerns with their friends, they even search for online books that provide answers to their projects at school. Teens are using the Internet in every single way one can think of.
• The applications used to help them in everyday life are those of social media. Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, Snapchat, but mostly Instagram, which has risen very rapidly over the last year or two, help teens inform themselves, chat, have fun and all sorts of things. Video games and mobile games seem also to be a great form of escape, especially for teen boys.
• The majority of the teens we interviewed likes interactive applications, and are fond of multi-tasking. This comes to bond with our idea of the BOOM app, the interactive game that we have presented to you. Our only concern is, that, if teens don’t have much time, how can we push them to go out and be involved in all kinds of activities, as our app suggests? We brainstormed about this problem, and we decided that the app is still a good idea that teenagers need and will appreciate, but we are going to make a few changes. For example, we may include more home-activities, such as watching classic movies, listening to all genres of music and having to take quizzes about the activities that the teenager completed.
Generally, the interviews helped us very much as we understood somehow the way that teens think and act. We asked about the problems, we analyzed them and now we are ready to go on with our project, being more related to teens’ needs than before. It was a great experience!
To sum up, this project bonded our team more and we gained knowledge that we used in a more practical way during the building of our app. It made us research more so as to understand the needs of teens in order to adjust the app activities and make our final product attractive for them. What we keep in mind is that we should make the teens keep using our app!
Alike Team: Edlira Osmena, Aggeliki Karampela, Konstantina Nikolatou, Elisavet Papantoniou
Special Thanks to : Betty Tsakarestou, Betty Tsakarestou, Katerina Vlassopoulou and Spiros Kapetanakis
