Surveys
Empathy Map
User interviews
Affinity Map
Problem Statement
Design Studio
System Map
Feature prioritisation
Wireframe/prototyping
Archetype
Competitor &
Comparator Analysis
Because X, they need Y
Usability Testing
Week 2
Week 1
Make Sydney Home.
When COVID became a global pandemic, countries across the world shut their borders and the tourism industry plummeted. This was no different for the beautiful city of Sydney which has always attracted flocks of tourists as a popular holiday destination.
The prolonged impacts of COVID forced Sydney’s leading tourism and events organisation, Destination NSW, to shift their focus from relying purely on tourist events and bed-nights to catering for locals by promoting Sydney as an ideal place to live.
My Work: Concept Project
The Destination is Home.
Competitors
Comparators
We just need more events, right?
Understanding the context through a business analysis showed that Destination NSW had two sister sites: Visit NSW and Sydney.com. These sites were heavily focused on events and bringing bigger event types to Sydney.
We found this strong focus on promoting events also consistent across the competitive and comparative analysis of other state government and local community websites .
Apart from finding some great ideas and functionality, we also identified gaps that may be opportunities that we can incorporate in our solutions:
Having a deals section to promote events happening in the city.
Ability to save interesting events to a Wishlist.
Thorough Filter function.
Limited options regarding activities/events which occur beyond city suburbs.
Websites were overcrowded which impacted the ease of finding relevant information.
Understanding the context through a business analysis showed that Destination NSW had two sister sites: Visit NSW and Sydney.com.
These sites were heavily focused on events and bringing bigger event types to Sydney.
The recurring theme across websites was the focus on Event Promotion! This suggested that events were important to city life.
But are events really what makes a place more liveable?
- Business Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
Consulting with over 35 people, we conducted user interviews, surveys and empathy maps which showed that thought processes changed when considering places to travel vs places to live:
It was further revealed that locals aren’t really interested in large scale events as they aren’t a part of everyday life! Instead, they value time with family, and friends, and need to feel connected to their community to feel a sense of home.
But events and attractions aren't a part of everyday life...
For travel, people crave places with different or out of comfort zone experiences or attraction.
​For living, people choose familiarity, often with surrounding friends or family.
People want to feel connected to their community
People value convinience
Money matters and Sydney is expensive
Spending time with family and friends is important
Sydney is Expensive and Feeling Connected Matters!
To understand and identify trends from all the research data, we combined important quotes into an affinity map to glean the key insights on what is most important for Sydney locals.
To our surprise the most mentioned issue was money! Most people found that Sydney is an expensive city so saving for the future is difficult. Other key insights gleaned:
The Budget Socialite is conflicted between socials and savings
Values convinience and efficiency
Our research lead to the creation of the budget socialite archetype to encapsulate the motiovations, attitudes and challenges of sydney locals!
Money Concious
Key characteristics:
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Loves going out with friends and family
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Always trying to save for the future!
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Money Conscious
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Likes to feel like they add value to the community
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Values convenience and efficency
Loves going out
Likes to feel like they add value to the community
Understanding the budget socialite
The budget socialite wants to feel a connection to the community. Doing so, they often find themselves needing to choose between socialising with family and friends or saving for the future. while requiring a sense of connection to their community.
Always saving for the future!
To socialise with family and friends
Save for the future
Acessible and shareable information
To feel connected with their community
How might we help them socialise, save and feel connected to Sydney?
To kickstart the ideating process on how we can help the budget socialite achieve their goals, we used Because X, they need Y framework to keep their needs front and centre.
Because they want...
They need...
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Cost-effective socialising options
Deals/promotions that will help them stay within budget
Ways to share their finds with friends and family
Ways to contribute and add value to their community
Provide Budget-Friendly Options and Incentives
Based on their needs, we quickly ideated rough concepts and decided to further explore the idea of a voucher system. To do this, we roughly mapped a system map to understand what features our concept solution could incorporate.
Main features we wanted to include:
Exploring this also showed us that the solution would most likely be a mobile solution as our budget socialite values convenience and would need to access these features on the go!
Concept solution’s main points:​
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Spring boarded from Dine and Discover vouchers​.
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Mobile application to use on the go to align with budget socialite needs.
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Vouchers in the form of loyalty cards with incentives​.
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What’s On that provides suggestions of places, activities and events.
With these features, we performed a design studio to see what ways we could help our budget socialite by staying connected to the community and friends while on a budget.
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We took the strongest aspects from our sketches to create our concept solution.
Design Studio
To keep the MVP simple, a prioritisation matrix revealed that features such as a filter system, saving interesting events and having a space for promotions/special deals were those that would reap the highest impact for users.
Loyalty / Discount card to appeal to the budget socialite's saving goals.
Sharing features for our budget socialise to easily share events with friends and family​.
Save function to quickly/conveniently allow users to “bucket list” promotions, activities, events of interest.
Filters to efficiently show a variety of options based on their needs.
Incentivise Dine and Discover on the Go!
Using features from the prioritisation matrix, we iterated our initial concept sketches to low-fidelity wireframes to flesh out the loyalty card “wallet” system.
How it works:
Each time the user visits a business, event or activity that participates in the current Dine and Discover program, their loyalty card can be “hole punched” by the business scanning the user’s QR code.
Once they have accumulated 6 or 12 stamps, the user will earn freebies or vouchers to encourage further spending. This will help Destination NSW promote Sydney and encourage resident engagement!
To focus further on budget-friendly options, we also incorporated a Promotions and Special deals section to specifically cater for our user needs.
But how can we feel more connected?
Conducting some early-stage usability testing revealed that the idea lacked a sense of connection for locals. This also brought light to some concerns regarding long term user engagement with the mobile solution as feedback indicated that locals may lose interest in returning to the app over time.
From this feedback, it was back to the drawing board where we looked into some specific data from user interviews regarding the user’s sense of community connection. We found 2 main points:
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Locals feel connected to the community by contributing a sense of value.
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People found meaning in building or adding value/impact to the community in some way.
Let’s Build Our Community Together with Community Builder!
Conducting more design studio and sketching sessions revealed some stronger themes surrounding collaborative community efforts.
We also gained inspiration from comparative concepts such as Grill’d who used a token method to inspire people to contribute to a cause.
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Exploring these concepts, brought to life the Community Builder feature where locals could be a part of a collaborative effort to make their city more liveable!
Track their impact and earn badges for their contributions.
Allowing users to collect tokens every time their dine or discover card is hole-punched​.
Allocate their tokens to a selected number of community projects to help fund the cause with the rest of their local government area.
"Home is a part of who we are"
This gave life to the Community Builder Card section of the app that focused on fostering community connection and long term engagement by:
The community builder aims to promote Sydney while providing a long term, on-going initiative to make the city more livable.
Discover Sydney as home.
Ultimately, the mobile concept solution meets both the user and business goals to make Sydney the destination of home.
We need to open the door to logistical and feasability discussions
Speaking with multiple teams within Destination NSW to understand the feasibility and logistics surrounding the minimal viable product would be one of the first key step to determining whether this concept can move forward. The concept also requires further testing to iron out some flow issues identified from our late-stage testing.
It would also be beneficial to understand the current dine and discover system and whether components can be transferred and reused. Liasing with local government regarding ongoing projects and their willingness to provide information and collaborate on the community builder aspect would also be a key consideration to explore.
Reflections and Key Takeaways
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Sometimes your hypothesis may be completely wrong but that's OK because the research will guide you to the right path!
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Framing a good problem statement is a tough process but it reaps great rewards by providing clarity to the project direction.
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Don't get too attached to your design because we need to constantly iterate and revise them based on feedback.
Design Tools
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Figma
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Mural
Team
Jessie Deng
Isabella Hunt
Duration
2 weeks
Project Type
Team Concept Project
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Competitive & Comparative Analysis
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User Interviews
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Surveys
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Empathy Map
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Affinity Map
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Archetype
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Problem Statement
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Because X, they need Y
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System Map
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Design Studio
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Feature Prioritisation
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Usability Testing
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Wireframing
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Prototyping
Methods Used
What do locals really value?
The business, comparative and competitive analysis of websites for Sydney locals suggested that a more exciting variety of events were needed to promote Sydney to residents. However. after conducting user interviews, surveys and empathy maps, it revealed that while people loved experiencing new and different events in a place of travel, this changed when it came to their place of home.
Savings, socials and convenience
From synthesising the research it was clear that Sydney residents mainly valued daily themes relating to the cost of living, connection to the community, accessible transport and living in proximity to those dear to them. Creating the Budget Socialite archetype helped to embody the needs and motivations of locals which helped us narrow down the key challenges they faced. This included a sense of disconnection from their community and a conflict between saving for the future and wanting to socialise with friends and family.
Connecting locals to deals and their community on the go!
From our key insights and challenges, we used our budget socialite archetype to ideate ways we can help meet their needs and achieve their goals. Using sketching and design studios, we developed a rough mobile concept based on the NSW Dine and Discover system where vouchers were transformed into loyalty cards that could be used with participating businesses. Springboarding from an existing system would require less work to build and while also providing incentives to locals to spend and earn rewards. The solution also includes a feature showing special promotions and deals on events, restaurants and activities which allows locals to spend and socialise within budget.
Performing early-stage usability testing on the concept allowed us to further refine the idea by adding a Community Builder feature which allowed locals to contribute to building their community by earning tokens each time their loyalty card is “hole punched”. The tokens can then be allocated to their projects of interest in their local government area to foster a sense of connection and value with their community and city.
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Sydney is the Destination of Home.
The mobile solution provided:
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Budget-friendly options for socialising that also promoted the city
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Added rewards and incentives to keep locals engaged
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Spending to earn incentives that locals can also put towards building their community. This results in a sense of community connection while also encouraging long term engagement with the app.
The important next steps would be to liaise further with Destination NSW and government departments to understand the complexities and feasibility of springboarding the NSW Dine and Discover System and organising the information and system surrounding the Community Builder feature. Further refining and testing of the concept is also needed to consolidate the flow of certain details in the solution. The developed mobile concept is a positive step forward as it improved resident life and fosters a sense of connection that ultimately, promotes Sydney as the destination of home.
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Case Study Summary
Due to the impacts of COVID, Destination NSW wanted to shift Sydney’s tourist centric focus to becoming a city where people would not only want to visit, but rather, live. To achieve this they needed ideas to cater more towards local resident life by promoting amenities and culture.