Download - Locally Stuck essay week 6
Locally StuckMOBILIZING THE EXPERIENCE AT A GLANCE
Tools for a thesis exploration
Jennifer Shim Jennifer Shim & Richard PéanCommunication Design and Technology BFA programParsons, The New School for Design
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Visualizing overall dining experiences with short videos of restaurants, which will provide information
about these restaurants in one application, will help users capture a little taste and ambiance of a place
before users even visit the restaurant. By having this application service, users will be able to find
affordable, delicious foods and will also be connected to local restaurants that already lack a younger
demographic; as a result, restaurants and end-users will benefit from this service-product.
So what’s the problem here?
There are already plenty of blog websites and television shows out there regarding the overall review
of the food of a chosen restaurant. However, even with all of these food blogs, television shows, and
restaurant review websites, these is still no bridge or communication between small businesses and
hungry, needy consumers eager to learn about the local hidden restaurant gems. These shows, such
as the Food Network or Travel Channel, lack in showing the true hidden affordable gems of New
York City and fail to deliver an application where consumers can go back and revisit the featured
restaurants.
Who’s organizing what part of the project?
My partner, Richard Pean, and I will both focus on the design aspect of the project this semester.
More specifically, I will be scouting to obtain content information about each restaurant to aesthetically
and efficiently profile into a mobile application. Richard will be designing the user interface and user
experience of the website and will be learning all the new coding languages that is to come and will
be further explained in his paper. I will be working alongside Richard by designing the UI/UX of the
mobile application as well to make sure it remains consistent with the website. While I design the UI/
UX of the mobile app and scout restaurant profiles to capture through image and video, I will also
be learning basic objective C to prepare myself to code the mobile app with Richard the following
semester. I will mainly focus on the Lower Manhattan area to scout for local restaurants that are
affordable for young adults and college students. However, because we need the content and branding
first, promotion of the application and each restaurant we feature will come second semester or right
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after the designs and various coding of the website is finished. Our overall focus is to help delicious
local food businesses in New York City, who are struggling to get their restaurant exposed, become
more exposed through use of new media, smart-phone technology, and different methods of social
media advertising for their young adult consumers to find them effectively and efficiently. However, this
semester, we are solely focusing on obtaining content and finishing design styles for both the web and
mobile apps.
How to create legitimacy for the creators?
In order for our brand to look on a professional scale and for our users and local businesses to trust
us, I will be creating a separate “company” site for Richard and I, the creators. Our company name will
be “StuffsDope” at www.shimjen.com/stuffsdope. It will be designed in a way to portray us as always
being busy with several client projects and continuously designing other web design companies, similar
to the two-man team “Thesearethings” (These are things) or Monkey Do LLC (Murtaugh, Tim and
Michael Pick), the creators of EdibleCity.com (LLC, Monkey Do).
Why young consumers?
We chose our main demographic to be young adults aging between 18 to 29 years for a reason. Young
adults, including college students, do not enjoy boring places and definitely do not have much time
to find an affordable place to eat at between meetings or classes. “The average tuition at a four-year
public university climbed 15%” (Armario, Christine) from 2008, which ultimately marked the beginning
of the recession. Tuition rates are climbing and students, even after graduation and with a job, will
be paying off their tuition debt for years. “Students are negotiating scholarship packages, avoiding
application fees, and taking on part-time jobs to help pay for their higher education pursuits” (Sheehy,
Kelsey). Because of this recession and the rising cost of higher education, rising, young adults need
help finding affordable, delicious restaurants to eat at between their busy schedules.
Why do we need to use new media technology, why not just be simple like Zagat magazine or
pamphlets?
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New media technology, like smart phone applications and the web, is mainly used by our target
audience. “People between the ages of 25 and 34 are more likely to own a smartphone (62%) than any
other age group, while 44.6% of smartphone users are between the age 18-34” (ANSON, ALEX).
---(graph)---
The young adult age group seems to be most consistent with their use in smartphones, thus explaining
why we should stick with this demographic. While the smartphones vary in different operating systems,
we chose to stick with the iPhone because “iPhone users download more apps on a monthly basis
(48 apps/mo.) compared to users of other mobile operating systems.” (ANSON, ALEX). On the
other hand, Zagat has been around since 1982 (Guide, OV) to build their brand and different age
group community. In our case, we only have less than a year to finish an app while using new media
technology for the quickest way to help build and promote our brand for consumers and locals.
How do we know that these restaurants are struggling?
Statistics show that about “800 out of 1,000 restaurants that open this year in New York City will fail in
the next 5 years.” (Laya, Patricia).
---(graph)---
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Why do these local restaurant businesses keep failing? Since the recession in 2008, local businesses
have been dropping left and right getting “slammed by the financial crisis.” (Pace, Gina). This explains
why these local mom and pop restaurants do not have effective ways of exposing or promoting
themselves to their young tech savvy consumers.
So who cares?
Local restaurants care because they need to find a better way to bridge their communication
with young consumers in order to create more revenue for their business. Young adults and
college students also care to find and experience local delicious spots efficiently and quickly
before they even go to the restaurant in order to save money and time.
What needs to be continuously researched?
Because young adults use their smartphones on a daily basis (ANSON, ALEX), they
are naturally accustomed to reading massive amounts of data in a simple interface on
their mobile applications. As a result, I will be continuously researching new mobile
design styles and better effective ways to appropriate massive data into a clear efficient
User Interface and Experience to aid me in the process of designing the mobile app. I
will also be researching ways to effectively capture a restaurant’s ambiance and food
through film and photography for a young adult demographic. For instance, the young
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adults demographic are accustomed to having everything in front of them quickly and
efficiently, so I would keep these video reels very short to about 15-30 seconds in order
to not bore the users. I will also research what attracts young adults through film and
sound by integrating a hint of sarcasm in the 15-30 second restaurant video profiles so
users can obtain massive amounts of data about a certain restaurant in a comedic video
short. How do you even research comedy and film? Through the plethora of popular
webisode series and mobile apps out in the world, I will be inspecting my precedents
to figure out the pros and cons of each company to see what they are doing is indeed
effective.
So why spend a year creating this very ambitious project?
New York City is filled with local businesses; however, the restaurant industry is the one
industry that is directly and initially affected by the economy. New local restaurants have
been opening and closing left and right. Thus, it is harder for young adults and students
to find these hidden gems to keep the economy flowing while keeping themselves
satisfied. Ever since the recession in 2008, young adults have been struggling to find
hidden mom and pop restaurants because those restaurants lack a level of exposure
through social media. Mom and pop restaurants have been struggling to keep their
users coming to their restaurants because they lack the resources to keep their
location on the web. It is difficult to fully satisfy users if they cannot easily access these
delicious, affordable eats. It is important to find a way to keep both ends of the party
satisfied while the economy strengthens.
How will we work together as a team?
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Because Richard will mainly figure out the UI/UX aspect of the website and I will bring
in the content to put on the site, we will have to work together by keeping the imagery,
film, and content consistent to be appealing to our younger demographic. The content
would have to match the style of our UI/UX design as well. This explains why I am also
creating the UI/UX of the mobile application. For instance, we know our target audience
is for humor loving, young adults on a budget so we will team up to make sure that the
film and imagery will be young, humorous, relatable, and brief. To accompany that style
through web, Richard will work with me to figure out a way for users to obtain all that
information quickly through an efficient and young-looking UI/UX.
Which precedents during research will help?
Most review and location based sites like EdibleCity (LLC, Monkey Do) or Yelp (Inc, Yelp) have a
map API of where the local business is located but does not contain high-end image content of the
food itself. When it comes to food, consumers want to see the product itself: the food. That's why with
the many review sites already available on the web, people need to sort through and read consumer
comments which are usually complaints about the restaurant’s service or quality of the food served.
With our site, we want to give our consumers what they want very quickly so they do not have to waste
time clicking around and opening new browsers. As a solution, we want to keep our users on the main
mobile app and not let them deviate from it by opening new safari browsers or map applications within
their iPhones.
---(screenshot of each app - Left: EdibleCity, Right: Yelp)---
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Stuck on Earth is a tool that enables photographers to document areas around the world
and develop an album that can be viewed by other users showcasing a curated experience
(StuckonEarth).This is a great precedent, for it helps traveling photographers tremendously by
showcasing only high quality images (that are curated through the owners). In this case, most of the
users have professional cameras to aid them in the process of creating content. On the other hand,
the majority of my target audience are on a budget and do not own professional camera equipment to
create a user-based content flow. Therefore, I will be manually scouting out each restaurant to create a
feel for the food and space.
GoogaMooga is a platform that uses Google Maps API to show real time locations of food venders
only inside the festival (LLC, Superfly Festivals New York). The mobile app has the ability to add
dishes you've already had and add dishes you want to try while at the GoogaMooga event to help pick
and choose from each vendor. GoogaMooga uses fun ways to find and pick certain dishes or vendors,
but only within the event. Alas, LocallyStuck will also have the “fun” aspect in the app, except it will be
for the Lower Manhattan area. LocallyStuck users will be able to “heart” or “like” their favorite places to
eat at and will have their own profile using Facebook Login to save and share the types of foods and
restaurants they absolutely loved.
---(screenshot of each app - Left:Stuck On Earth, Right: GoogaMooga)---
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Smosh has been creating fun and humorous cheaply-made videos since 2006 and eventually
worked their way up to creating better quality and thought-out videos to create a larger fan-based
community (LLC, Alloy). They helped publicize their own brand by social media tools like the website
Newgrounds.com (Fulp, Tom). By uploading their fun video shorts on this site and Youtube, they were
able to catch their audiences’ eyes and eventually after a few years were able to host their videos on
their own server/site. LocallyStuck will research deeper in ways that Smosh has promoted themselves
in the following semester. Currently, I will be focusing on how video shorts like Smosh, has accustomed
their video humor and content to their demographic. I will continue to research Smosh and other video
shorts to customize our videos to reach out to our specific young adult demographic. We will be using
Youtube or a Vimeo API as our video host on the mobile and web app because Youtube/Vimeo already
has a huge fan-based community and it will be an easier and quicker way to spread the word on
restaurants (Youtube) (Vimeo).
---(screenshot of app - Smosh)---
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All in all, my portion of the thesis and Richard’s portion will be a very ambitious project to tackle
because it requires a whole business plan and concept in order to launch this mobile and web
application. There are several skills we need to learn ourselves with the help of the following
mentors: William Bevington for concept idea and information architecture, Doris Yee for Web
and mobile beta testing experience, Scott Cushman (my uncle) for Objective C mobile app
coding, and Joseph Kim for coding (my direct manager at work).
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Bibliography / References
Main Thesis Process Site: a.parsons.edu/~shimj574 Armario, ChristineArmario, Christine, and Associated Press. "Average cost of four-year university up 15% – USATODAY.com." News, Travel, Weather, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World - USATODAY.com. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-06-13/college-costs-surge/55568278/1 (accessed October 15, 2012). Sheehy, KelseySHEEHY, KELSEY , and USNEWS EDUCATION. "10 Colleges With the Most Expensive Room and Board - US News and World Report." US News & World Report | News & Rankings | Best Colleges, Best Hospitals, and more. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2012/09/18/10-colleges-with-the-most-expensive-room-and-board (accessed October 15, 2012). ANSON, ALEXAnson, Alexander. "Smartphone Usage Statistics 2012 [Infographic] | AnsonAlex." Technology, Tutorials, Social Media and Infographics - AnsonAlex. http://ansonalex.com/infographics/smartphone-usage-statistics-2012-infographic/ (accessed October 15, 2012). Laya, PatriciaLaya, Patricia. "80% Of New York Restaurants Close In First Five Years - Business Insider." Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-restaurants-fail-rate-2011-8?op=1 (accessed October 15, 2012). Pace, GinaPace, Gina. "NYC restaurants slammed by financial crisis - Business - Local business | NBC News." Breaking News & Top Stories - World News, US & Local | NBC News. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27106533/ns/business-local_business/t/nyc-restaurants-slammed-financial-crisis/#.UHsymWnBLDM (accessed October 15, 2012).
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Guide, OVGuide, Online Video. "Nina Zagat Video | Interviews." OVGuide | Online Video Guide - Watch Free Videos. http://www.ovguide.com/nina-zagat-9202a8c04000641f8000000000afb3c3 (accessed October 15, 2012). LLC, Monkey DoLLC, Monkey Do. "Edible City | Find Food Trucks in New York." Edible City | Find Food Trucks in New York. http://www.ediblecity.com (accessed October 15, 2012). Inc, YelpInc, Yelp. "Yelp New York." Yelp. http://www.yelp.com (accessed October 15, 2012). StuckonEarthon Earth, Stuck. "Stuck on Earth." Stuck on Earth. http://www.stuckonearthapp.com/ (accessed October 15, 2012). LLC, Superfly Festivals New YorkLLC, Superfly Festivals New York. "The Great GoogaMooga Festival." The Great GoogaMooga Festival. http://www.googamooga.com (accessed October 15, 2012). These are thingsAdrion, Jen, and Omar Noory. "These Are Things - Home of the Modern World Map." These Are Things - Home of the Modern World Map. http://www.thesearethings.com/ (accessed October 15, 2012). Murtaugh, Tim and Michael PickMURTAUGH, TIM, and MICHAEL PICK . "Monkey Do | Web Design and Development." Monkey Do | Web Design and Development. http://monkeydo.biz/ (accessed October 15, 2012). LLC, Alloy LLC, Alloy Digital. "Funny Pictures, Humor, Funny Videos, Internet Comedy | SMOSH." SMOSH. http://www.smosh.com/ (accessed October 15, 2012). Fulp, TomFulp, Tom. "Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone." Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone. http://www.newgrounds.com (accessed October 15, 2012).
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