Lessons

Lesson Info

Prototype Review With Client

Alight, so before we bring Matt up to do this, and you guys can hang out here while I talk about this prototype feedback briefly, is now we want to get ready for the testing phase. We've prototyped one idea, you saw that it didn't take a whole lot of time, it was obviously very cheap to do this, but we have an idea, we have a story. Obviously you can tell a story in different ways, like the storyboard that I created earlier for Sandwich Squirrel, but here we kinda have this board game skit kind of thing, which brings the idea to life in a way that's easily understandable. So this is how we're gonna get feedback for our testing phase, and this is for Matt and for anybody who's giving feedback, but also for us getting feedback. So we're not trying to like sell this idea, we're just prototyping to learn from him. So we're just gonna tell the story to him like we did in our dress rehearsal, and then he's gonna tell us what works. So what are the positives, what needs improvement, what are ...

some questions and concerns that he has, and then what are some surprises or ideas for us to iterate upon? And then we would iterate upon that based on his feedback. There's no sort of hard sell with the idea here, and then this just gives him a framework, these four things, to help structure his feedback, and the what works can also be through the lens since he's our client and our user, you know, he can talk about it through his own personal experience, but in a real world context, the what works part relates back to your how might we question, right? So thinking about, does this address all of these themes of connectivity and internationalization and all of this stuff that he was surfacing earlier about scaling up his work. So that's the lens that he's gonna be talking about this feedback through. So let's bring Matt up now, and then we'll do this run through of the story. So Matt, this is Art Heist, this is one of the prototypes that we've developed based on learning from you, coming up with this creative brief, this how might we question of using geocaching and using kind of social and game dynamics for art, and so we had this idea of you being this ringleader and kicking off this, what could be a global art game, geocaching kind of challenge. So we're gonna give you a demo of how this could work. Okay, alright. You guys ready? Alright, so action. Right, so we're in Seattle, where you are, and you've made a piece of art that you want to put into this geocache, to be the first one starting the chain. So this is you. Yeah. So you send out a notification to your user, you put in your artwork there, and you send out a notification to users on the special app that reaches out to all sorts of people, including present company. Alright. So this is avatar LeeSean. Looks like you could. Yeah, looks just like me. It was avatar HD. Nice, very good. Yeah, and we both got the app, we got the notification, I happen to be in Seattle already because I'm here for CreateLive, and so it's really a race. So I've made my own artwork, which looks like that. Okay. It's awesome. I've made mine as well. So it's really just a race of who gets there first. So I'm gonna go, (walking noises) so looks like I got get there first, so my first thing is I'm gonna take a selfie with me and your artwork. Okay. And then I hashtagged it Art Heist so then more people know about this game and what's going on about it. Then part of the game dynamic is because I've created a work of art, I can leave my piece there and take yours with me. And there's something on your artwork, whether it's a QR code or just your WhatsApp information that allows me to contact you and say hey, awesome artwork I'm gonna take it back to New York with me and geocache it where I am. So I'm sort of on route now. Mhmm. I'm on my red eye. So while LeeSean's on route, HD comes in and, I come to the location and I find LeeSean's art he's left at that geocache location. I take a selfie, hashtag Art Heist, and drop off my artwork here and I take this with me and go on route to undisclosed location at this point. So this is like, And you email and you text him as well? Yeah so I text, or in the app I'll send a notification saying hey LeeSean, I got your artwork. Yeah so you're gonna take this to like Tokyo or something. Yeah. And then we cut, so this is the continental divide here, and we're back in New York City, we've got the Statue of Liberty, I found this awesome location in Central Park, I'm gonna geocache that, put your artwork there. I can also selfie myself here, just like hey, brought Matt's artwork to New York, you'll know about that, other players in this Art Heist game are gonna know about it as well, and then can kind of go about my day either making more art and putting in more geocaches or moving things around, and this starts to build up. This dynamic of people traveling, putting art places, taking selfies of art, that's kind of making it a game and a community as we go along. So yeah, so through this lens of I guess what works for you, what needs improvement, questions, concerns and then surprises and ideas. So in a real-world design crit, we'd be kind of taking notes based on these categories and then we'd use that for a new version of the prototype which we won't do today but this is kind of just completing the circle in one round, but obviously in real life, this goes through multiple multiple rounds and then maybe we'll move up from art supplies to something, to prototyping in code or building some specific elements like what the app actually looks like and all of these things, but this is just the very first version. Okay so first off, this is awesome. Like this is incredible, I'm definitely gonna steal this. So the things that work about it. Because I had the privilege of watching the process come together, one thing that actually really works is leaving your artwork somewhere. So I think that many people, many artists, are completely willing to create a piece of artwork and then leave it somewhere, the physical thing. It doesn't need to, there doesn't even need to be a digital version or anything like that. So I like the fact of leaving it somewhere. My wife is at home watching this and she's like probably yelling, because I've actually done this before. Like there is my works in South Africa. Yeah. You can go find images of mine on the Wild Coast in South Africa. So the leaving it places is very cool, I like that a lot. I think another part of it that works is the taking a selfie with the hashtag, that way there's feedback of people who have gone and done it before, that part is great. I think the general concept of there being it's generative, in that every time a heist takes place it sends out signals to other people, I like that part of it a lot. So it has a kind of generative piece to it. And obviously to the general concept of it, it's across disparate locations and people choose their locations themselves, I really like those parts. In terms of needs improvement, I think that the idea of the app itself, it seems like you'd get this notification and unless you were close to one of these locations, you would, like oh I have a trip planned to, you know, Spain, but not for two months and there's this location in Spain, like I'm not gonna get there. So it's heavily reliant on someone already being in that location. Yeah. So maybe there's some improvement around there of the people that get notified or only the people that are close to it. Maybe there's some sort of location element where you only see things that are close to you for wherever you are, and maybe that would be a good thing. Like if I'm on vacation in Spain, now I see all these things that I go, and then it's a trigger for me to create a piece of art while I'm in Spain. I was on this hike, and I did this drawing, and then I can go and do this. Maybe that would be a possible improvement piece there. Another potential is as these notifications go out, there would actually be archives, so when you open up the app, rather than just seeing notifications, you can say well you know I'm going to Spain in two months, let me see if there's a geocache over there or an Art Heist cache over there and if so, then I ought to take a piece of art to drop off. Yeah right yeah, that's also a good idea. The questions I'll just go through them. Totally. Each one of them. So questions and concerns, one question I had is how, how does, if you're leaving artwork in places, does there need to be some special check zone for the art, or does there, like how does it, how do we know it stays there? This place in Central Park, I found this thing and it's on the website, but then I go there and it's not there Yeah. And like, I don't know exactly how to resolve that piece. Yeah, I think that's one thing that, you know there was something really compelling for us about physical real-world artworks, rather than just like an augmented reality thing. Right, right. Of like putting a digital artifact somewhere. Yeah. But I think that's an open question for us too, like is there some sort of security about the switch out, is in public outdoor spaces or is it about partnerships with I don't know coffee shops or galleries and there's some I don't know, plug-in thing where people can swap out the art. I think that's an open question to think about. I think another opportunity is perhaps like a partnership with somebody like Amazon or some retail, like they have lockers for pickup and they could dedicate, donate, a locker for this game. That's an interesting idea. That also promotes for them. Right. Actually that kind of figures into one of the things that made Pokemon Go so successful, is that a lot of small businesses use it as a promotional technique. So it attracted people to them and enticed people into playing Pokemon Go which therefore fed on itself. So coffee shops and that sort of thing, that sort of little store might host these as a way of enticing people to come in. Also get a symbiotic relationship where they're promoting the game as well as we're promoting their business. Right yeah like businesses or even like museums, like art museums or galleries or something, where they could participate in this as these like venues. That would also address the how do you store it there. And make sure it's still there. One thing I found in terms of the surprises and ideas, we've already been kind of talking about some ideas, but one of the surprises for me was just the concept around the heist. Having the heist and we didn't get to see too much about it, but the initial message and how that could be a really effective trigger, like that was surprising to me. Well first of all the whole thing is surprising to me, because I never would have come up with this, and so I think that's very cool, but the concept of it being a heist and the letter that goes out is go steal this or something, like that's a really effective trigger I think for people to just engage with art outside of just oh yeah I like art, I like to go see art, like this is a very engaging way to drag people into the process, which I think is very cool. Yeah and I think there's also this idea of public art and like, collecting of art right? Right. There's building in incentives like I guess you could keep the piece, but there's something about the social norms of this game, and just wanting to perpetuate this game of like dropping something off and this give get dynamic with the community, right? And maybe it's also about managing who's in the know to begin with before it gets super mainstream, to just kind of manage that growth so there's these trust mechanisms in place. I think that's something to think about as well. Okay, very good. And how does it respond to some of your original needs, in terms of connection and scaling and things like that? Do you think it does that? What's really interesting about that is that one, this is, it's been expressed as a concept for almost like you'd make a business out of this sort of thing. However, it also scales to something that I would just do myself. It's a lot of structure, which is kind of nice. Yeah. And it has a lot of built-in triggers and timeline. And it seems to hit all the bases of the things we talked about during the interview, which I think is pretty cool. And so I like the way that it's something that I could just do amongst friends, and that would be a way to, and then I could make friends through Facebook and through Instagram, through the hashtag and that sort of thing. So it could be just local to me, scaled to me, but it's definitely a way of getting work out there and doing something next with my work, which I think is really great. But it also could extend to being something a lot more robust and have a whole system behind it with an app and everything like that. So yeah, it's very cool. I think you bring up this really important point about the point of this low-fidelity prototyping allows you to easily scale it up or down, right? And you've already mentioned this for stuff like we could build out some custom mobile app that handles all of this geocaching stuff, or you could just do it with existing tech like send coordinates and drop pins to your friend network. I think that's actually also a prototype too of like, let's see how this works, we don't have to invest in developing the app, let's just use stuff that already exists, you and like five of your artist friends try it out as the next prototype and it doesn't have to be a new startup or a new service line that somebody has to invest in. Right, right. Awesome, did you guys have any sort of final thoughts on this prototyping and feedback process? It was really kind of a validation for us to hear your excitement, your feedback that hits all our key points. This feels very visceral to me, just 'cause as I saw, we hadn't, you hadn't asked me and I hadn't said anything and then we came up with this whole thing and then the heist and the geocaching thing, but just that it's actually a practice, like I travel a lot, and when I do travel, I leave drawings places. Oh cool. So places that we've gone, I actually have drawings in places. So as you were describing this, I was like this feels so real, because I've actually done this. And your drawings are way more awesome than our stuff. Not to like, malign my team. (laughing) Right.