Part 3: Gathering Insights
In order to understand the opportunities, offers and problems of building the Teen Vibe application we first and foremost needed to gather insights by setting interviews with our target audience. Observing the teenagers’ responses we were able to gather insights that were very important in the design of the app, while they indicated and raised some issues that might have been problematic.
The Interview Questionnaire
Before beginning to conduct our interviews, we created a questionnaire that consists of 11 important questions, whose answers would offer us valuable insight in the characteristics and social media habits of the teenagers from ages 13 to 19.
In order to ask these questions, we approached relatives, friends and acquaintances of the targeted audience so as to receive the best answers and results. We also asked all of the questions personally and face to face to notice the answerers’ facial expressions and reactions to what we asked them, and simply to ask further questions when that was needed. All of our questions are also open to answers, giving the people we ask the opportunity to discuss with us and express freely their opinion. Last but not least, we tried to talk with teenagers of both sexes, as equally as possible.
The questions we asked are the following:
1. Tell me about yourself (name, age & anything else the interviewee wants to add).
2. Are you interested in content created by YouTubers, bloggers, vloggers, instagrammers and other social media influencers?
3. Do you have specific favorite public personas or social media influencers that you like? Who are they?
4. Would you download an application that contains content exclusively made by such influencers (such as articles, photos, videos, etc) if it existed?
5. What kind of content would you like a teenage application to include?
6. Do you believe that if such an application existed it would be successful amongst your peers?
7. From where do you download your mobile or tablet applications?
8. Do you ever download applications from advertisements on the social media platforms that you are using?
9. Do you talk about or influence each other regarding the applications that you use or discover?
10. Are you more likely to download and keep for a long amount of time an application that constantly updates its content and features, do you prefer a more stable one?
11. Would it influence you if an application is created or sponsored by a company such as Coca Cola, even if the content is not related (directly) to its product?
The Interviews
After conducting 40 interviews with teenagers from the ages of 13 to 19, we have gathered what we believe to be the main user character profile for the target audience that we are aiming at, with the creation of our application. In general, all of our interviewees so far have projected a strong affiliation with the Internet and the most popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat in order to communicate with each other, watch and share videos or photos, be updated about music, festivals, concerts, new brands, games or applications. Moreover, our interviewees expressed a huge interest in the basic focal point of the application we are developing; the content created by social media influencers.
Cultural, social and internet technology are common interests among all of the interviewed teenagers, something logical, considering their strong connection with mobile and computer technology from a very young age nowadays, although their specific interests and habits are variably different, but, not too much. “All of my peers use Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. It’s an easy way to communicate with other people, share your feelings and your thoughts, meet new people and find all the information you want about events, festivals, concerts…” claims Alex, a 17-year-old boy who loves social media and video games. Regarding the variety of social media public personas and the plethora of internet mediums, every teenager expressed from fan-love, admiration to simple interest for different people and media. For instance, Anna, currently 16 years old, shared with us “I visit Zoella’s (YouTube) channel almost every day. She is so beautiful, funny and inspiring and makes me feel empowered and confident to be myself”.
What is more, the interviewees expressed strong interest in an app that would try to create a platform just for social media influencers as that would limit significantly the amount of time they spent on navigating through many different apps to find their content; as well as that they would be happy to see them talk live and interact with them in way that was not always possible before. The exclusive content that will also be provided through the deals between the app and the influencers also made the big fans of such personas very happy as they are excited to receive more content by them, while the exclusivity feature made them feel special towards these personas. “I think it’s a fantastic idea. I’d love it if the app included exclusive videos and content from my favorite vloggers. I wish Troye Sivan (popular social media persona, singer and actor) would be included in an app like this. He inspires me so much.” said Anastasia, 18 years old. For the teenagers that did not have some specific favorite social media followers, they were very content with the idea of discovering more people and content to learn about and follow. “I don’t know much about influencers, bloggers etc. except from video-gaming channels, but I’d certainly like to discover new content if it’s related to my interests”-Nick 16 years old.
With the aforementioned facts in mind the biggest percentage of the interviewees stated that they would be happy to download such an app, while a few people didn’t think such an app is necessary as they are already pleased with their social media accounts and internet activities. “I mainly use Facebook and Messenger to communicate with my friends so I’m not sure if I’d be interested in this kind of application.” revealed Charis, 17 y/o.
Furthermore, when asked their favorite mobile application qualities and features all of them mentioned image and sound content as they require less effort and are more enjoyable and fun. At the same time, they affirmed that they enjoy conversing with their peers about the latest mobile technology and applications available in markets such as PlayStore and AppStore, while the possibility of making suggestions towards one another about them is very likely and usually followed upon especially when the information or suggestion is coming from a very familiar person. Vasilis, 14 years old and a fan of mobile games shared with us “Yes, we are doing that all the time. If I find an application that I really like I always tell my friends about it and they do the same for me.” At the same time, many apps easily become trends in their group of friends while they are very easily influenced and have a strong interest in discovering and trying out new applications, whether in the end they keep them or not.
In addition, many of them mentioned that in order for one app to keep their interest and excitement continued they must definitely contain multicultural, multi-thematic and constantly changed content and styling so as that they keep up with the most popular apps that already exist in the market. Qualities such as looking very complex, old-fashioned and the lack of interesting modern and young produced contents were all considered negatives by all of the interviewees. “Honestly I get bored easily. I want to watch or read content that I can relate to, something that is modern and catches my eye. That’s what I find exciting.”-Magda 17 y/o.
Despite these facts, it is also important to note that most of them, but not all, asserted that they always noticed the mobile application advertisements in their social media accounts and timelines, and depending on what application and the way that it is portrayed, strongly matters on whether they will click on it to view it or not. In the case that one app includes public personas or people they follow and admire the amount of how many people would download it increases instantly and greatly. “It’s only natural this influences people” affirmed Sergios, 16 y/o. Consequently, the marketing strategy of the app should be smartly designed so as to not only target the right teenager target audience but also to raise their interest towards the app, so much that they will want to download it. What is more, the interviewees also expressed, that they are five times more likely to download and use an app on the basis of whether the company that designed it seems official and not that much amateur. “Companies with products or services with huge success are more familiar to most of the people and that’s why they trust everything that comes from them” claimed Chris, 19 y/o.
Last but not least, the answers we received regarding the whether they would download an app made by a big corporation such as Coca Cola were mixed. Some of the interviewees were concerned that they would fall victims of a marketing strategy and would have to cope with constant reminders of a product through advertisements, that eventually would avert them from the content presented within the application. “The concept is nice but I don’t think I’d like to be constantly bombarded with ads” said 19-year-old Mirtw. Others stated that they would not mind an application promoted by a big corporation, but an important factor would be at the same time their awareness or love towards that brand. “I guess I wouldn’t mind if it was Coca Cola. I mean, I love the brand” added George (17 years old). However, they all agreed on the fact that if the advertising were to be done indirectly and not in profound and exponential way, and the content produced for and in the app was very interesting, they wouldn’t mind the brand behind the formation of the application. 18-year-old Marianthi stated “If the content is good and not directly related to the company I don’t see a reason why I wouldn’t download the application.”
Team: The Market Games
Team Leader: Daphne Diapouli
Team: Amanda Voulgari, Daphne Diapouli, Frosso Karpozilou, Katerina Constanta (Konstantinopoulou) , Anastasia (Silia) Simeonidi
University: Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
Department: Communication, Media, Culture
Professors: Betty Tsakarestou, Spiros Kapetanakis, Katerina Vlassopoulou
Daphne Diapouli Katerina Constanta Σηλια Συμεωνιδη Amanda Voulgari
