Thursday, 11 May 2017

14:53

Update May 2017

This week was a final week, in which we had our final board room session at the Park Inn Hotel in the center of York. 

We were given the opportunity to pitch our Brand, App Idea, and Re-brand to other brands working within the same sector as ourselves. 

Our pitch went well, and we were able to communicate our ideas effectively to our audience and answer any questions they had about the research and development of both our app and our re-brand. We also enjoyed watching the other pitches and seeing the other companies works come together in one place. 

After our day at the hotel, we worked to complete our portfolio which showcased all of our work together in once place, explaining our journey from our first session to today. We are very proud of our work as a team, and feel like we have gained knowledge and developed many skills through this process: problem solving, teamwork, resilience, and presentation skills - just to name a few!

We have enjoyed taking this journey together as a brand and we are very proud of the work we have completed and showcased during this last week of our project. 

- Edge.   
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Thursday, 27 April 2017

14:19

Target Audience

After doing user research we wanted to define our audience a little further, and decided to create personas for the types of people who may use our app to gain a better insight to our audiences needs and wants and what they would gain from using our app.



Our first persona is named Eduardo and is a 19 year old 1st year student at York St John University, and is living in University halls. Eduardo is outgoing and has a lot of friends, enjoys going out and is part of the university football team and enjoys spending with the team, going to their weekly socials and can spend a lot of money while on a night out. He's also very active on social media and has accounts on most sites including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Our next persona is Alice, a 20 year old second year student who is studying Primary Education in Leeds. She drives to and from her placement, which is at a Primary School in York. She has recently moved into a shared house with a few of her university friends, has a part time job and enjoys going to the cinema and going out to nice restaurants. Like Eduardo, she has accounts on most social medias, has accounts on Facebook and Instagram to keep up with her friends, and her family back home.

Our final persona is Viktor, a 21 year old creative writing student from Sweden, studying in York for a semester. He is living in University halls with a few other international students and with his flatmates, wants to learn about and experience the English culture. He likes going out to town at night and visiting bars and clubs, has recently joined the hockey team and is enjoying their socials and events. He is also an active user of facebook, using it to keep in contact with his family and friends back home.
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Tuesday, 28 March 2017

14:06

Social Media

Within our brand research we found that digital technology is a key part of branding and helps with building recognition, as it allows social media to play a key art in establishing a brand identity, assisting in bringing success to a brand.

To maintain our brand identity we created social media accounts for our brand, building a platform to communicate with consumers. Evans (2012) states that 'social media sits at the pinnacle of the current trends in consumer-to-consumer conversation and marketing amplification', so naturally we felt if important to create a social media presence.

We created both Twitter and Facebook accounts to gain online presence and be able to communicate with a range of audiences. Facebook has the most active social media site, according to LifeWire (2017) with Twitter following close behind. Having a Twitter account also allows us to communicate with other brands, gaining inspiration for our own and improving our own brand, whether it be through communication or getting feedback from others.

Creating an online presence is key for the branding process, as it establishes is a brand image, so we used our logo and colour scheme throughout to become recognisable and familiar with consumers.








Evans, D. (2012) Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. New Jersey, Wiley.

LifeWire (2017) The Top Social Media Sites People Are Using. [Internet] Available from https://www.lifewire.com/top-social-networking-sites-people-are-using-3486554 [Accessed 27th March 2017]
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04:22

Week 9 (20th-26th, March, 2017)


This week's session was on PR, public relations, and it's function within the industry. PR is generally the main "in between" factor with the company and whatever audience it might have. For example a company may set up a PR department and that department would deal with customers, local authorities, media (like the press) and shareholders, just to name a few examples. One way PR might communicate is with a press release. PR has changed over the years, the old saying; "sex sells" is found to be exactly that; old. It's not sex that sells these days it's activism, from TV adverts to a company tweeting their support for the ape currently in the White House, activism and politics has a bigger impact then sex. One prime example is the Lyft vs. Uber "event" wherein Uber denounces protesters protesting against the travel ban, people delete the Uber  their phones as a moral gesture, their competitor, Lyft, announce that they're giving money to a civil rights foundation, Lyft surpasses Uber downloads for the first time.

In addition, this week we spent time to bring all of our recent material together into a new presentation to be given on the 30th.
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Monday, 20 March 2017

02:19

Week 8 - Branding Politics

During week eight of our project we discussed branding politics.

We began the session with a case study of Miss Kō, a restaurant with a very particular brand image.


We found that some commentators had argued that their brand identity relies on sexist imagery. Upon group discussing, we came to the conclusion that we did not, personally, agree with this statement. Firstly, the advertising campaign is not much different to others that show the female body. And some advertising campaigns that show the female body also, do it in a sexual way, but Miss Kō’s female subject is not being sexualised by a particular pose or background, and the focus is on the women’s tattoos. Also, similar imagery showing tattoos is used with male models also. We recognise and understand why people would think it is sexist, because it does draw attention to the female body, but personally we do not think so.
We also learnt that commentators have also suggested that it enforces racial stereotypes. We disagree because the advertisement is very modestly done. The typography on one advertisement is written in rice, which could be argued to be stereotyping their culture – but the typography connotes the restaurant’s food more than their culture and race.
Finally, we came to the conclusion that while some would find it problematic, we think it would be a stretch to truly categorise their brand identity as truly problematic.
We then looked in more detail at some other advertisements.


We started with the GB Paralympics advert, which we thought was very effective. The poster represents Unity, as all the subjects are in uniform, stood in line together, and the sponsors of the Paralympics are small at the bottom of the page to keep the subjects as the main focus. There is no reference to the actual games beside the logo, leading us to believe that the advertisement is more about the people in shot than the games themselves, promoting pride as the subjects’ faces are all above the logo, and your eyes are drawn to them, but there is no attention brought to their disabilities.
There is a strong call to action with the line ‘meet the superhumans’, encouraging the audience to tune in and watch these Paralympians in particular. The framing is effective as the light is on the subjects faces, bringing more attention to them as the main focus.

We then looked at this advertisement for ‘Elle Feminism’. The main objective of the poster is trying to take a stand against misogynistic stereotypes, listing all of the names that women have been called. We found that there seems to be an overload of text, so not many people are likely to read it all to get the full effect of the poster. While the text is bold, there is too much of it. We discussed that the hashtag for #ellefeminism is very small at the bottom of the page so it isn’t clear what the poster is for – anyone who does read it, would think it was just an anti-abuse or anti stereotype poster.

 The final advertisement we looked at was this Stone Pall Poster. This poster is very recognisable and carries the message well, making it very effective. The colours and text make it bold and concise, also quick to read so the message gets across to the audience. The simplicity allows the poster to be more effective, rather than poster with too much imagery that can be hard to decode. The text is very demanding with its use of full stops and explanation marks, telling the audience something rather than asking them. It demands attention and demands that the audience ‘Get over it!’

Overall, we found this session very useful, as we can consider branding politics when designing our own brand images. Discussing how we can avoid a problematic branding image helped us in deciding how we can brand our company effectively to get our message across to the audience without offending. 
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Wednesday, 15 March 2017

09:03

Week 7 (6th-12th, March, 2017)



This week we had a session on project management from media industry professional, Marie Thouaille. During this we were introduced to several concepts and tools that are key to project management, such as; the project life cycle, S.W.O.T. analysis, scope management, stakeholder management and Gantt charts.

The project lifecycle is a broad plan that can be applied to most projects, in the session we focused only on two of the four stages in the project lifecycle: Define it and Design it. We moved on to S.W.O.T. analysis, S.W.O.T. analysis is a structured analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of anything from projects to products and brands.We were set to work on our own S.W.O.T. analysis chart and decided to use our rebranding task as the focus of it. 


The rebranding of Tesco was the focus of all the tasks set in this session. Next we defined the scope of our rebranding, it’s important to define scope clearly so you have a clear cut idea of what you have to do and to avoid “scope creep”, the constant adding of new ideas that will throw your project off balance.

Our scope for Tesco Rebrand: The project to create and develop a TV advertisement campaign for the brand Tesco, to make it more memorable and modern in todays market.

After that we went on to stakeholder management, stakeholder management is used to figure out exactly who has interest and/or influence over the project process or outcomes. To apply this to our Tesco rebranding task we created a chart, similar to the S.W.O.T. analysis chart, and mapped the influence and interest of the various types of people connected with our project.


Lastly we were told about Gantt charts; a chart, similar to a bar graph, that lays out the duration of the project and divides the time up among the different parts and actions needed to be completed. They’re typically used to make sure the time given to a project is used efficiently, so the project gets done in a timely fashion and doesn't run over the deadline.
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09:00

Existing App Research

For some further research for our own app idea, we did some existing app research, looking into existing apps in our category to examine what features the other apps used, what was effective and what wasn’t.
BY looking at existing apps, we could develop more ideas for how we could make our app stand out from the other budgeting apps already out there.

Daily Budget  

The first app we analysed was ‘Daily Budget’, which we decided to look at as it has a very similar concept to our chosen app idea. The app is by C Ruttinger, who describes the app as fun to use, which makes the app more desirable to download as budgeting is not a fun concept.
Very similar to our app idea, the app allows the user to set a daily budget and make note of how much they have spent each day. The user can add their income, expense and savings, so they can keep track of their budget and money easily by keeping it all in one place where they can view it everyday to see where they are spending their money and how well they are sticking to their set daily budget.


 The above screenshots show the first screen the user sees when they open the app. There are many positive features and aspects to the app and the home screen is one of hem, the screen is blue if the user is sticking to the budget, while it turns orange if the user is low on money. This is one feature we enjoyed as it is very visual, and easy to see if you are not sticking to the
budget well. Along with the large numbers, it makes it easy to use.

Another positive is that the app was colorful, making it more fun, but it was still simple and easy to follow, allowing for ease of use. Even though the app is simple, it is still trustworthy and looks professionally made and designed.

One feature we also loved was that the user can note when they have spent money, how much they spent and what they spent it on, so they can keep track of where there money is going and when and where they spent it. The app allows them to note when they spent money on groceries, household, transportation and more. We liked this feature as it means people will be able to see what they are spending their money on, allowing them to budget further if they find they are spending more in one area.

Along with many positives, we also found some   negative features of the app.
one of the main ones we discussed was that the app didn’t have many features that could be used for free. without paying for a ‘Pro’ version of the app, the user could only use the basic features of the app.

As our audience is mainly students, this would be negative for our own app and would affect the success of it, as most students cannot afford to pay for an app, and would be more likely to continue to use one that had all features for free. The app was usable without paying, but to fully get the benefit of the app, the user would have to pay for the extended version. However, many of the reviews on the app store stated that   paying for the extra features was worth it, as they ended up saving money by using the extra features.
To look for more views from long time users, we read the reviews on the app store. The majority of the reviews were positive, with the app earning mostly 5 star ratings. A lot of comments state that they find the app easy to use, not too complicated, and many reviews state that the app would be suitable for students or people who have never budgeted before, which fits out target audience for our own app.

Some of comments explained that the app did not have notifications, so the app only worked if the user remembered to use it, which is another key negative point which we can use when developing our own app.



The second app that we decided to look at is called ‘Goodbudget’. The app is made by Dayspring         technologies. the app concept is also very similar to our app idea.Much like ‘Daily Budget’, the app allows the user to set up an account, add income and expenses to track their money and budget.

One positive that we foudn with the app, is that it is very visual. As seen in the above screenshots, the app uses bars and pie charts to show the user how much money they have spent on certain things, making it easy to use and easy for the user to see where their

money is being spent, and how much of their budget they have.
Another positive that the app shared with Daily Budget is its simplicity. The app uses simple colours, with a white background and green accents, making it easy on the eyes and easy to follow. Using simple backgrounds and colours has allowed the graphs to stand out on the page, meaning they aren’t confusing to follow and even users who are not used to graphs can make sense of them and use them effectively.

Another positive, and one it does not share with Daily Budget, is that you can use this app to set up a budget for a household, not just individuals. it allows the  people using the app to budget their finances as a household, keeping track of a household budget. This is a feature we may transfer into our app, as some    students have a household budget to work with.

Rather than just researching budgeting apps, aimed at everyone, we wanted to look into some apps for deals aimed at students. The most popular app like this is Unidays.

We liked the Unidays app because it allows students to find discounts local to them. It has an interactive home page, in which users can see the top new offers on offer instantly without having to search around too much. It has a search menu too, so if a user wants a deal for a specific place, they can search for it easily. 

Looking at both budgeting and a deals app, we found that both are effective and can be used to save money. So upon discussion, we decided that we could combine the two apps into one app, creating a Budgeting App for Students, which also offers deals. 
This means users won't have to download two apps, and if they are struggling to stick to their budget, the app can offer deals and strategies for saving money in shops and supermarkets local to them.
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