Team 8 – Project Work for 6B

Solution Ideation

Brainstorm

Our group is exploring how to encourage people to spend more time outside. With this in mind, we had a free listing brainstorming session where we identified a few different solution areas we could explore: Calendar integration vs. scrapbook vs. dating app vs. outside tracking.

Notecards

Each member of our group chose a concept from the brainstorming session that spoke to them and sketched out images related to their version of the idea. The sketches revolved around two central ideas: a nature scrapbook and facilitating outdoor activities with other people.

Concept Sketches

Each member of the group then chose the solution that spoke most to them and developed rough concept sketches for it. 

Three of the concept sketches were for the “Outdoor Scrapbook” and they included the following features

1. Earn decorations such as stickers for scrapbook pages by consistently logging. 
2. Consumers can order a physical version of their outdoor scrapbook
3. The Outdoor Scrapbook could be a social media platform where users can share their outdoor explorations
4. The app will auto-generate weekly/monthly/yearly spreads that summarize the user’s scrapbook memories.

One of the sketches explored calendar and weather integration which would use the consumer’s personal calendar and the weather to determine when is the best time to remind the user to go outside.

The other sketch focused on building a silly app to use with friends to go outside.

Implementation Decision

• Wish to reach a wide target audience -> not dating app
• No desire to reproduce things currently available on market, so we decided against tracking users’ outside time
  • We were initially excited to keep track of how users use the outdoors, and how we could nudge them, but we found it difficult to ideate around just this idea
    • A similar reasoning for calendar integration, but we were unsure what the product goal would be for that -> we may still pivot, but decided instead…
• To gamify the outside: scrapbooking
  • After team discussion, gamification was what we were most excited about
  • From our intervention learnings: users respond positively to tracking
    • Next direction: what tracking, if any, for our nature scrapbooking app

Assumption Mapping

Assumption Testing

Assumption 1 – Effort/Motivation

The first assumption is that our users will actually be motivated to continuously put in the effort to create a scrapbook in such a way that the time they spend outside will be sufficiently increased or improved. We want to know how we can let users feel a persistent sense of motivation and gratification. 

Our Hypothesis – Since most users already take a good deal of photos and spend time calendaring, we believe we can get them to go outside more without too much work by providing them with frequent rewards. These rewards will take the form of digital stickers that can be added to their scrapbook. 

The Test – Since this assumption involves whether or not users will remain consistent over time, it will be difficult to test directly. However, we can compare users who receive rewards or who don’t receive rewards during the course of our assumption test. We will ask participants daily to spend time outside and send us back a picture. Some of our participants will be told that they will be rewarded with stickers (physical ones in this case, to be placed on a laptop or water bottle), and some will not. 

Metric – We will measure the length of the response time to the request for a picture, and also the consistency of the responses (whether a user misses a response). 

Criteria – We will know we are headed in the right direction if the users that receive stickers are more likely to respond to the texts and respond quicker. 

Assumption 2 – Increasing Time Spent Outside

The second assumption is that taking a picture a day of the outdoors will encourage people to spend more time outdoors. We want to ensure that users will not just take a picture outside and go back inside immediately.

Our Hypothesis – People today are motivated by collecting memories in the form of pictures. Making a  collection of pictures of nature will motivate people to go outside more. Since users will likely want to take a memorable, pretty picture, they will be more contemplative and aware of their surroundings while outdoors.

The Test – We will ask participants at the beginning of each day to take a picture of any nature scene they thought was beautiful that day. The participants will have the freedom to choose when they take that picture. At the end of the short study (2-day study), we will interview our participants and ask about the activity they were engaging in when taking that picture, how much they spent outdoors, their thoughts and feelings about the experience. 

Metric –  We will measure the amount of time they spent outdoors when they took the picture, whether they remembered to take a picture at all, whether the experience of taking a picture outside added or took away from the quality of their experience outside.

Criteria – We will know we are headed in the right direction if our users indicate that they spent more than 5 minutes outdoors when taking the picture (they didn’t just go outside to take a picture). We will also know we are headed in the right direction if users indicate that taking a picture outside didn’t take away from their experience outdoors.