My meeting with Duncan Riach

I came across an article online by Duncan Riach. The article was was titled ‘Multi-millionaire at 27. What I learned.’ and is available here (https://hackernoon.com/multi-millionaire-at-27-what-i-learned-7df8153f5425#.caot1rr5k).

Duncan Riach worked in Silicon Valley, and I reached out to him regarding Frog Voyage. It was incredible to be able to talk to him regarding my project, and I was able to learn a lot from the converstaion.

While using the mockup, Duncan gave me invaluable feedback regarding key parts of the experience.

Below is a list of all the notes taken during our conversation.

General Feedback

• The Tour guide search box could potential employ the use of a API provided by a company like wolfram or like siri to allow users to be able to search for information.

 

• Each new page requires a context box. This needs two forms; a short explanation & a longer one which is a little more in depth. This can be provided by a frog that appears throughout the experience. Examples of this in use can be seen in Sim City & Clash of The Clans

 

• Look at allowing users to gain points to gain additional accessories to add to their frog. This conflicts with some of my research so will needs some serious consideration. Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org) is a great resource that allows users to gain points for learning, and also enables a parent viewing mode.

 

• With thousands of users, even with different frogs and accessories, the difference between the avatars become even more difficult to seperate. For this I could consider exploring options of further customisation such as colour and scenes in which the frogs are based. The scenes could represent the location in which the user is currently visiting. This location should be pinned on their homepage as their current location while also being present on the map.

 

• Determining how safe the site is from Pedophiles is tricky. The best method I have concieved is encouraging kids to learn about online safety straight away, making them aware they should never shhare personal details online with strangers. I could block email addresses and telephone numbers from being sent in the chats, and then allow the kids to connect their Facebooks when they reach the age of 12 so that they can take their social connections with them as they grow older and start to use new services. The network effect is in play here, holding the users to the platform because all their friends are there.

 

Profitability & Taking service to the market

• Splitting the profile into a parent/child service so that the parent can track the progress of their child will be invaluable as a tool to bring the child and parent closer together. It means that the service could advertise to the parents based on the interests of their child, offering organised holiday packages.

 

• Speaking to the tourism boards of the countries worldwide can be vital to raising revenue. Encouraging them to invest money so that their country can be portrayed in the way they prefer, with information that provided.

 

• When taking the service to the market, it is important to have the site live first, as the value will be given based on not only the concept, but the active users and methods of profitising the service.

 

• Once the project is live, getting the users is the key part. To do so approaching schools and asking the headteachers in person for permission to get the kids on the site is vital. Using social proof by talking about how the service is used in other schools in the area can help convince the head that is it a great idea

 

• Once there are active users, usage data can help loop between feedback and improvement. Don’t be affraid to change something entirely if that’s what the feedback suggests.

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Presenting my idea for the new CMS

Wireframes

The wireframes are a vital stage within the design process. I started with the list of vital information created from my research and set about creating a design that held of that information. It is vital to remember that the entire experience was streamlined as much as possible to create an easy to use website but also to allow the animations to work.

HOME

Starting in the top centre image you are presented with three updates, these are anything to do with the festival itself, new announcments or news of artists. Along with this information, there is a timer until the festival starts, videos and images of the previous years festival. This means new or returning visitors will have something interesting to see.

MAP

This is a great function that I will not fully be able to represent fully in my design itself because of it’s complicated and techincally difficult nature. There is a map of the entire site, with iconography and key to link up with to allow the user to see where the different items are on a map. This is good for users to get to grips with the location before they arrive, but it really would come into it’s own league when the user arrives at the festival and uses the mobile version of the site. It would allow the users to be able to pinpoint their location on the festival site, so that then they could see where they need to go to find toilets, the nearest food or bar stand. This is great, but another feature would be that the users could find their friends on the map. This means that the biggest problem of loosing friends is easily resolved!

LINEUP

This is my wireframe really shines, compared to the artist profiles there is a lot more information about the artist and a much nicer experience. Instead of a list of names, there’s an entire page dedicated to the images of the artist and their name. When on their profile  you will find a themed page with the artist details and songs playing in the background!

TICKETS

I wanted to streamline this as much as possible, there are currently 36 ticket variations including add ons, and the ui is difficult to understand. I broke choosing the ticket down into 3 simple stages which makes the purchase much more straightforward.

Learning Polymer Project

Using the Google elements that come with the Polymer project is reasonably easy, it is just important to remember that we are dealing with pre built elements and we need to treat them in this way. While they are customisable, there are limitations to what you can do. Below you will see my first efforts to create a page which experiments with the use of Polymer Project elements.

The Code;

The Result;