Show Evaluation

Overall, I believe that our final show was successful in some ways, however, in others let down. Let's begin with the overall communication between us as students and information about what time we needed to be in and set all banners etc up. We were asked to arrive for 2;30 and after eventually getting into Bath, I felt like it was a huge waste of time as all we did for an hour and a half was sit around waiting for the hotel to allow us in later, the only positive there was to this was that we then had an excess of time amount prior to guests being allowed in to set things up and overthink banner and positioning. It was apparent that there was clear communication between the media department and the Apex hotel, which relieved the stress off our shoulders as most information we needed, we could ask Jo, Nick or Steve about, however, the Apex staff were not overly welcoming to us as students, often giving off rude body language and seemed uninterested in us, now I understand that we as a college were kindly donated the space to rent but this should not have compromised the customer service received.

As for how our work was presented, I was hesitant to be enthusiastic about displaying the work on a banner as no concepts were shown to us in terms of how the look would work, so well all assumed that it would look pretty amateur, however once seeing the banners printed I was relieved to see the concept come to life and the idea of a banner was pretty cool to see and something we will later keep forever (although my mum wasn't too happy at the suggestion of me sticking it to a wall in the house). It was such a nostalgic feeling to look at other displays and picking out just how much we have not only grown as people but as artists from concepts pieces to working with clients. Personally, I don't think there would be much to change if I wanted to although the location of choice was ve
ry contrasting to the liberal creatives that we are, the atmosphere of the venue almost damped spirits with its more formal feel and It did not feel like a time for celebration however just mulling around and quietly judging.

For the past two years, I have wanted nothing more for this course to end, I wanted the freeing independence I was promised, in due time, I was given it, however now my time at Bath College is coming to an end, I want to cling to the back of Steves Crocs and not leave, because I don't want to be an adult just yet! Coming into this experience, I felt truly at a very low point in my life, I have made friends for life in this experience and finally learnt the sacred skill of photocopying, I am thankful to be given a chance to be on this course and will not waste a skill I have learnt.

Evaluation

As a digital publisher, I wanted to create something that would push my knowledge of software use to a new level for my final project. Having a good knowledge of the most common of Adobe programs, I didn't want to do something basic with a simple photoshop or Illustrator so when planning my ideas and the suggestion of an app was put forward, I wanted to jump at the chance to create something I had not done before. I wanted to create an app that I, myself would want to use and so coming up with Snapthat, an app where you could take pictures of clothing or shoes to find UK based suggestions seemed like a strong enough fit. When envisioning this app, I wanted something marketed at my target age range of 18-25 and straight to the point in terms of usage, maintaining a sleek and minimalistic design, as my research suggested, seemed like the best fit, I believe that I executed this well, In terms of influence I had, as most 19-year-olds will tell you, I am heavily involved on social media and I think this is what encouraged my idea. I knew that my app making skills were pretty poor and so I wanted to bulk it out by also designing the marketing for the campaign and the branding of the app, in doing this I could put into practice what I have learnt over the last two years and then push myself further with the app.

I believe that my app has both strengths and weaknesses, due to the limited time frame I have had I feel like the app could look a lot more professional and polished, however, I believe that the app stays true to my original intentions of creating the prototype and I should be less critical of my skill strength considering I did not any skills in apps prior to this project. Another weakness I believe my app has is the fact that I could not fully understand how to get a working camera for it to work via phone, I think this has taken away from the overall professional look of the app prototype, with no straight answers online or tutorials on how to add in the camera, there was not much I could do about it. Another weakness of the app is that is the complex maintenance I had to go through in order for the app to work correctly such as creating small files such as text and having to bring them into Adobe XD, it was hard and I believe that maintaining the app if it was to launch in real life would take a lot of work. I believe that a strength, however, is the fact that the app has working features so I can show examples of the prototype and it fully explains through this medium, it has been very beneficial, another strength to me personally is the is the success of teaching myself Adobe XD through tutorials to great a working prototype. My final two weaknesses were the fact that the app looks too simple and the detail does not look sustainable enough for me to work at the grade I am may have been originally expecting to achieve, as spoke about previously my personal circumstances  had rapidly increased in problems due to this I struggled to manage the workload I wanted to achieve as I found my day to day life more difficult and this jeopardised my quality of work. The final two strengths of the project that I found to be the fact I did a heavy amount of research which turn meant that the experimentation and other work after came pretty easy, the final strength was the fact that my work was coherent together, it has flowed together consistently and all made sense together.

As for the experimentation, I performed a lot of my work on aspects of branding such as font, imagery, layout and design work. All of these elements were considered prior to making the prototype for Snapthat as they all have a character to build into as a brand, I made different forms of experimentation and then displayed them to my focus group as they would be deciding which designs I picked, I wanted to do this because my target audience would be the consumers who would decide if my app could be successful or not and so in giving them the choice, they will know what they like. Experimentation is such a key part of any designing process it really affected how my work developed from different forms of a logo to have a definitive answer for example. My development after securing my designs escalated from there on, I had the ability to make leaps and bounds in my work from having a simple logo to choosing where I would place that logo on my app, looking through my progress blogs which I ensured to do at least twice during each assignment has allowed me to reflect on just how far I have come, from being unsure of my idea to finalised it seems like months ago. With each reflection blog I have done, I always ensured to plan out what my next steps were or how I would build upon the information I had collected and what my plans were to do with it. I found myself falling behind at the beginning, like I found last year, due to the overwhelming amount of work I needed to do, I also believe I procrastinated a lot due to the refusal of believing this would be my final year of school and then I would be an adult (I'm still not over it).

In terms of Snapthat in comparison to another similar type of media, I feel like it is most similar to Screenshop, a competitor I researched into during my research portion of this project. In comparison between the two, I feel like Screenshop caters to a different audience such as middle ages women who like high-end expensive goods in the USA or that is what it likes its celebrity promoters to believe, in comparison to this Snapthat offers a UK alternative which caters to a younger, social media hungry audience who just want to know who or what each other are wearing. Screenshop others a variety of alternatives to what is being scanned, however, as seen in my research, this doesn't always go to plan with some of the alternatives being nothing alike! with Snapthat, it only offers replicas of what is being pictured and if it cant be found for some reason or another, will then only offer alternative items which will be consistent with the image. The other obvious difference between the two apps is the fact that Screenshop is a published app, whereas Snapthat is only a prototype, currently.

Showcasing my app to friends and family felt like a huge relief, to me it meant that I had finalised all I could and was now finished, the feedback I gained was very complimentary but I know it wasn't the best. However, if you do not know much about Adobe then I assume it must seem like a lot to create an app. Creating the app and the research, experimentation and a lot of consideration for small things like a time frame you could advertise in is a lot more time consuming than anything could realise if you want to be through so completing the last hurdle and finishing this app felt great.  My changes/improvements have remained similar throughout, If I could improve this project I would have liked to have polished my design work more and see the prototype of my app through to a strong result, another improvement I would have liked to perform if given the opportunity is to see if my marketing could be successful, such as paying Instagram to upload my advertisement and seeing how much intrest I would have recived, the same could be said for a bus advertisment, by registering the traffic I recieved to the app I could state if the marketing would be successful or not. I also would have liked to work on Snapthats social media, experimenting with promotional photoshoots and other ways to get the brand out there. It is very surreal to look back at my statement of intent and see how far things have progressed, it's like finishing a television series that you have watched until the end, bittersweet. Originally I intended to create an app that would identify garments of clothing and filter through to find the best UK based alternative, I think that I have stuck to my statement of intent really well and although I haven't created work to a quality I am happy with, I have stuck to all of the original intent.


In conclusion, it is very bittersweet to come to the end of this project, something it feels that the department has been talking about since we started two years ago! Opposite to others, I started this FMP very hesitantly and reluctantly, however, over time I feel like my enthusiasm has grown as well as my love for focusing crutches like Red Bull. I have had a huge personal battle going on during this project and sometimes it felt easier to drop out and walk away than continue but through the support of those such as Jo and Ed I have come to push myself and achieve more with every week even if I am deteriorating on the inside. I fell behind a lot, but thanks to the understanding of those in the media department I have committed to something that I can walk away from with my head held high and hopefully a good grade to have for the future even if it is looking pretty bleak for me right now. The outcome of this project has been great in showcasing my current talents as well as learning new ones with new software which I can display in years to come and grow on top of. Overall, I think my project was successful in its own way.

Finishing the app

After sitting down to do more research on the basic knowledge of Adobe XD, I stumbled upon this tutorial which I found to be the best in terms of helping me progress with XD. Since using the tutorial I have managed to complete the basic layout for my app through XD before adding in the bells and whistles of animation and usability. I had previously stated that I wanted to quick time my progress from beginning to end but by the end, a Quicktime of my progress was looking like a feature-length film, Instead, I created a small screen recording for my progress up until this point, this how my flat lay for the app is currently looking; Now that I have created the flat lay and added in details such as a service bar at the top to make the app seem more lifelike, I am going to progress into the prototype of Adobe XD which is considered the more difficult part. For me, this is about upping my skill level from a competent adobe user to a true Adobe student, this will separate my layout plans for the app into a fully functioning prototype.

Prototyping the app was not as difficult as it once seemed, in fact, it was like using any other of the Adobe software. Having now completed the app, I know just what to do and it seems as easy as any of the other software I have completed. In addition to compleeting what can be seen above, I have also added a 'Backstage' Button which when selected, takes a user to the settings or home if they need it. I have created a QuickTime explaining my reasoning behind my design work which you can find here, so I will not repeat myself, however, I am really impressed with the mock-up of the app I have created to a high use level like this. I did not find myself struggling with anything in particular during this process, thanks to the tutorial found above, things were made easy for me and I could make the prototype easily. 

Overall, creating the app really tested my ability as a student to try new software with no prior training in them. Creating Snapthat and the struggles I have faced along with it is something I am really proud of, I am worried that the app is not to a good enough quality as a second year digital publisher but to create an app with no prior knowledge is great in itself.

Modifications

The only modification I needed to make from my focus group feedback was that I needed to change the positioning of Snapthat's slogan as it sits in advertisements; This is the advertisement currently, however, I agree with the feedback and want to change the slogan too, so that the triangle seems more consistant. Changing the slogan and then adding it to a mock Instagram advert gives the advert a new edge which makes the brand seem really consistent.

I am glad someone pointed out the change because otherwise, it would have gone unnoticed and would not have looked as good as it does now. No other changes were suggested to me during my focus group that I would like to take on and use, nor do I feel like there is anything I want to change that this point. I am happy with both of the advertisements I have created now, with the mock bus ad I have proposed to be used for Uni buses. 

I think that the adverts together look really consistent, my only criticism would be that the triangle would not fit around the text of Snapthat on the bus, however, I think it is still a strong advert that looks consistent with the Instagram advert.

Performance monitoring

In order to monitor my performance during my production portion of my final project, I have created a spreadsheet which shows the time limitations I have and the number of days. I have already fallen behind schedule due to my experimentation taking longer than anticipated, I have only allowed myself two dedicated days to my production of the app, which I believe is doable because most of the work is already done thanks for my experimentation, now it is just tweaked to my work to make it look professional and changing anything that my focus group feedback to me.

I also intend to do a screencast of my work whilst I am working within Adobe XD to show my progress, I will then edit this together and upload it into a blog where I can explain my process.

Development

I think that my most development has stemmed from my experimentation once my research had been finished, with research not much can be shown accept graphs and quotes taken off of the internet. So far I have progressed from graphs stating that the Apps icon should be black and white to actually creating a rough copy of my apps design. After progressing this far, it is really cool to see just how far I have come in terms of the stepping stones in each key piece of progress.

Other progression I have made is recognising  that some of my research may not have been what I needed in order to progress correctly, for example; Researching into 'Gen Y Not' was not beneficial to me at all, however researching into other competitors of Snapthat was, it allowed to understand just how and why apps such as Instagram are successful in contradiction to my book review which was very biased against my target audience's generation. This was a development to me because I believe that next time I will not pursue research that would clearly not benefit me from the beginning.

Stepping into my recent work during my final project, I have developed the most during my reflection blog posts where I can truly look back and pick out pieces that I would like to change about current, especially during my experimentation that creates most of the ideas I will continue to follow through with. For example; In this blog post, you can see me stating that I prefer my design on the left due to its more professional appearance and so using this information I then proceeded to ensure that my all of my other experimentation pieces looked similar to maintain a good consistency of quality.  Carrying on from this, when it came to my marketing experimentation, I ensured that my reflection work was constant, for me this came in the fact that advertisements on social media can be treated like elevator pitches and you need to sell something quickly with very little given away and so I needed to get a balance right between anonymity and triggering interest;

 


Overall, I think that my development has been very strong by reflecting on my work and thinking about how I could improve, I will also work with a focus group to confirm any changes but thanks to my reflection blog posts I believe I am happy with my work so far. 

Progression Blog

I feel like I have come on leaps and bounds during my experimentation, not only have I executed my experimentation well and finished some on my designs but I have conducted a focus group to a strong level and received really beneficial feedback on how to improve, which is key. I am slowly coming to the end of my FMP now, with only the apps layout and design to be finalised before Snapthat is completely finished, I think I will struggle during this as I will need to go back to Adobe XD who is quickly becoming my nemesis. However, I need to push forward to ensure I get a good end result which reflects my skills change over the two-year course, If something is to go wrong at least I can reflect on this during my reflection and how I could have changed it.

Feedback from focus group

It was always my intention to create another focus group to gather their feedback from my experimentative designs, I wanted my focus group to be based around my target audience of 18-25-year-olds which had worked well previously and given me some great feedback to work with. This time was no different, although my focus group was smaller, involving the work of my class, I still took some reasonable feedback away to change things. Taking back feedback from my last focus group, I wanted to ask more questions whilst I had the chance which I think did help. The questions I asked were;

I think the questions I asked were a true reflection of all the information I need to finalise my designs, they offered me either the confirmation or changes I needed to make from my designs which were shown on screen to save time and money. Similar to last time, I wrote keynotes to summarise later in this blog post. By explaining my concept and aims of the brand, the class seemed to really understand what I want to achieve, for my probe questions some of the key information I gathered was; 'I think that buses are outdated, however explaining you would only advertise on uni buses is a really good idea' another participant said 'I think that people undermine the idea of advertising on buses, businesses still do it which mean it must work!' another piece of key information I took from my probe questions was that the majority vote to which design for Instagram they preferred was this one;
 Which I am very relieved about as it is also my favourite design which does not need much changing for my finalised designs, one piece of feedback I have taken and will change is that I should swap 'see it' and 'Snap it' so that the triangle will read as 'see it, snap it, buy it' which makes more sense and I agree with that, so I will work with this and change it.

Moving on from my first questions, I wanted to know why the majority vote went to this specific design of Instagram advert. Some of the feedback stated 'it seems mysterious' and 'It looks sleek and professional' which are both positive pieces of feedback to have, after, I asked what my focus group thought about my black and white only colour theme to which all participants said the same 'it looks good' 'it is mature and high fashion' this is what I intended to do so the fact they all saw that is very relieving to know! Following with the positive feedback, after showing the prototype of the app 8/10 said that they would use the app, the 2 who didn't were male so that was disappointing as I wanted to market at them as well and when asked why not, they said its because they're not into fashion enough to want to use the app, which I think is fair. Receiving feedback that is positive is a relieving feeling to have, especially in my design work that is not finalised yet, my work on logo and slogan was also taken positively expect the piece of feedback to change the positioning of text and slogan which I completely agree with and will change during my production process.

My final three questions were my closing questions, questions with no definitive answers. The first question was 'Where do you think Snapthat will struggle' some of the feedback I received was 'If you were to launch this app, fashion apps is such a saturated market that I think you will struggle to be successful' which I would agree with, if my previous research did not disprove this with a majority vote interest in the app. I wanted to know if those in my target audience also believed that this app could be successful, overall the feedback was that If I put all of my time, money and promotion into it it could easily be as successful as other big social media brands, which is a good piece of positive feedback. Finally, my last and closing question was 'which piece of marketing will be least successful and why?' I wanted to know this as my target audience know what they do or don't pay attention to, in a vote 4/10 said they would be less likely to pay attention to an Instagram advert than an advert on the side of a bus, which I think is reasonable. The way Instagram ads sponsored posts in like the posts you may see your following is very clever and eye-catching so I thought it would be the most successful.

It is such a relief to have positive feedback from my target audience from my experimentation, from this focus group not only have my Marketing campaign designs been decided but I know where I may fail but also where I may succeed, which is good to know. Knowing that I have the backing of my target audience is a huge benefit to have as evidence of my success.

Flat-lay Experimentation

For this part of my experimentation, I will be working with Adobe XD, a new software to me. Due to this, I will be watching tutorials first to get my bearings with the app before I begin experimentation with flat lay plans. From my basic understanding, so far it has become apparent to me that I will need to create my work in a different software such as Illustrator or Photoshop and bring the work in, much like the use of InDesign.

I am finding the software a struggle the currently, getting used to the features and different appearance of tools which could be found anywhere within XD,  the one pro to using Adobe XD so far is the fact that the screen size option is very quick and useful to use, allowing Adobe to moderate the app size is far better and time efficient than creating the new document yourself, I am also finding it very frustrating that the program seems to assume what you as a user would like; for example; It will often zoom in and out whenever it pleases which can be very distruptive when focusing on other work on the page, this alone is one of the reasons I have decided to work with InDesign for the prototype of the app and Adobe XD later on for the interactive aspects. I have yet to complete a piece of layout experimentation in Adobe XD due to the level of frustration I am facing, I am finding myself have less a belief in what I can create with Snapthat.

Moving to Adobe Indesign was the most move for me, from choosing a different software I have been far more productive in creating a flat lay plan that I work from. Indesign 2018 has the same screen sizing feature of XD and so it made my progression even better, here is a basic concept for my design;

As you can see, my design is very simplistic. I would like to add more interactive features such as the 'swipe up' arrow to directly move up, I think that this will be a strong detail to add to capture users in. Another issue I will struggle with is adding in the access of a phone's camera through Adobe XD and something that I will need to research into and may just had to leave as an example image if my skill level does not reach which is being offered as a suggestion. Finally, I would like to add in social media sharing links, in the 'Buy it' section of the app, I believe that in doing this some may choose to find the styles they like and share them, in doing this a strong word of mouth success can work for Snapthat really well in order to promote. Adding in the hand-drawn social media prompts really added to the social media aspect of the app, it made the branding of the app look consistent together; Overall, I am happy with the progress I have made from making the choice to change software to planning a flatlay idea of how my app will progress, I think that my app will take a very similar form to this, however small tweaks will be added to make it look professional. I will continue this progression in my production phase. 

Progression blog

I feel like I am progressing very quickly through my experimentation so far, Snapthat is taking shape very quickly and my prior research has helped me so much in terms of knowing what my target audience wants and working with it to create a good app. I have so far created my apps icon, logo, slogan and advertising material which are all very important aspects when establishing a new brand. I also find myself adding to the collection of work I already have with other important aspects I had not considered before such as trademarking and the price of advertising. From here I will be working on the layout of the app, which I am anxious about as I using new software, however, this is only my experimentation phase and so problems or corrections can be solved and made.

The Price of Starting a business/brand

The price of marketing products can be very expensive, especially when choosing highly lucrative ways such as working with celebrities. Thankfully, I have decided not to market with celebrities but advertising through social media can be just as expensive as well as more traditional forms of advertising on buses. In this blog post, I want to investigate the price of advertising through my chosen methods to see how costly it would be to advertise like this as a start-up business with little to no funds, just like any other real business. To begin with, I want to Investigate advertising through Instagram. Instagram, owned by Facebook incorporate themselves into one business when going through as a business looking to advertise, although Facebook represents Instagram, it is made very clear that you will not advertise between the two. When filling in the criteria for what the ad for Snapthat to do, it became very clear just how much I needed to pay, for example; If I wanted an Instagram ad placed at 10PM (our time) for one month, I would need to pay $350, that is prior to choosing audience specifics such as age. This is a large expense for any start-up company, let alone someone who may start this a business on the side, Facebook/Instagram could also not confirm an outreach that an advertisement could successfully reach, making the risk outweigh the cons of advertising.

To advertise on a side of a bus, I started by looking through first buses who run the university buses in my example city of Bath, unfortunately, they do not run the advertising themselves but a company known as 'Ticket Media' The website gives some very factual information such as 30% of users of buses being between the ages of 15-24, the highest percentage on their graph. However, the price again is very expensive. A basic quote for local advertising on a bus is £637 and there is no confirmation of how long the advertisement will be on the bus. This seems very risky, however, much like Ticket Media say themselves, you as a brand or business are putting 'the message directly into consumers hands' which is a great way to have direct contact with your target audience.

Another important aspect to look into when creating a brand or business is trade marketing when creating a business or brand name a lot of work goes into creating a name that works for you, it needs to reflect the brand well and concisely, therefore when finding a name that works for you it is important to check it is not already trademarked and if it isn't trademarked, then how much will it be to trademark the name. To do this, I used the gov.com website as I knew it would be the most trustworthy, thankfully, 'Snapthat' was not found on the trademark database, so I set about researching into how much trademarking the name would be. Trade marketing is worked out by the sum of current values of stock in the group divided by the total number of shares in the group, luckily for me, I have no stocks or shares in Snapthat so to trademark the name would be fairly inexpensive! But I need to consider things like employing a solicitor to help with the legal set up of starting a company which can easily be £500.

It is very clear that starting a business is very expensive, from my estimates alone it will cost well over £1500 to market successfully and protect myself legally, this is prior to any success of a business.