BBC Meets Team Disco Shed
August 2015
USER RESEARCH ANALYSIS REPORT Understanding People Hyper Island DXD Crew 1
BBC Meets Team Disco Shed
August 2015
USER RESEARCH ANALYSIS REPORT Understanding People Hyper Island DXD Crew 1
Disco Shed Meets BBC
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“What are the opportunities to use digital platforms and content to connect summer season festivals with learning and entertainment throughout the rest of the year?�
Disco Shed Meets BBC
Research project took place with the support of industry leaders Matt Cooper Wright of IDEO, and Jenny Holland of ESRO. It was organised, conducted, debriefed, and analysed by students of the Master of Arts in Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island in August 2015, for our client, BBC, as part of the module on Understanding People. Our research question was about finding opportunities for the BBC to connect learning and entertainment opportunities with women aged 18-34, using digital platforms during the summer season of festivals. We used a combination of research methods to find what people do during this time period and associate specific behaviours to summer festivals and how they can be related to new learnings and discoveries. Our findings can be summarised in two major insights:
People plan their festival experience as a group The target group is interested in niche, non mainstream activities Based on these findings we discovered two main opportunity areas for the BBC to connect summer season festivals with learning throughout the year. By facilitating people’s group planning of the festival experience. Through being their go-to companion during the festival, the BBC can get to know their likes and dislikes, and provide personalised learning after the festival. This opportunity lies within a theme we called “Why not having a plan, could be the best plan”. Through providing a platform for people to share their expertise on small festivals and niche events, BBC can start offering content that is less mainstream, appeals to the more alternative, and more edgy. This opportunity lies within a theme we called “Engagement is in”.
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OUR RESEARCH PLAN PRIMARY RESEARCH This study consisted of 8 design research interviews, each audio recorded and lasting an average of 60 minutes. Primary research was conducted by our team of 4 over 3 weeks in August 2015, covering:
• 5 interviews with users • 3 expert interviews • 1 inspirational visit to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival; • 1 online survey with 47 responses
INTERVIEWS WITH USERS Participants were recruited through our personal network of contacts and the interviews were conducted face-to-face, at the workplace, or remotely over Skype.
Joe, 22
Kerry, 34
Emma, 37
Student
DJ
Teacher
“[At festivals] I get to meet “[A festival goer’s feedback “I avoid festivals with people I don’t normally to Kerry] My wife had young teenagers so that I meet, I get to speak to cancer and at the festival it can drink freely” people I don’t normally was the first time she has speak to.” danced in four years.”
Karl, 35
Heather, 34
Copywriter
Vintage Shop Owner
“[On festival making “I’ve grown up of Radio 1 decision] Most important and there’s a gap. I don’t thing is the type of people have anything to listen to” who go there” Understanding People - DXD Crew 1 August 2015
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EXPERT INTERVIEWS
John, 65
Naomi, 31
Isabelle, 27
Professor of Sociolog y and Anthropolog y
Producer
Event Launch Manager
“Have you heard of the Canterbury Tales?”
“[On Festivals] Makes you feel like you want to be everywhere and not miss out”
“People feel happier before the festival - the sense of anticipation builds up”
FIELD TRIP The Edinburgh Fringe Festival
ONLINE SURVEY
1
ONLINE SURVEY
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47
RESPONDANTS FROM ALL OVER EUROPE
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DISCUSSION GUIDE
Our discussion guide (Portigal, 2013) contained questions focused on 3 main areas: i) Users’ Interests and How They Learnt ii) Users’ Past Experiences at Festivals iii) Users’ Experiences with BBC
INTERVIEW TOOLS
To engage our interviewees, we designed a set of tools to use during the interviews. I) A Customer Journey Map We asked participants to outline their most memorable festival experience and rate every touchpoint by their emotional state. This helped us to get a broader understanding of what they were feeling, doing, seeing and thinking. It helped participants remember events they struggled initially to remember. ii) Relationship scales We asked the participants to rate their relationship with the BBC and festivals by placing a circle on a scale from 1 (hate it) to 4 (love it).
FEEDBACK & SYNTHESIS
Understanding People - DXD Crew 1 August 2015
Based on our findings, our team formulated insights (Kolko, 2010) under the guidance of IDEO and ESRO researchers. Thereafter, the team identified opportunity areas and possible ideas for future design teams to ideate around.
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Heather & Our Relationship Scale
Disco Shed Meets BBC
KEY FINDINGS, INSIGHTS & RECOMMENDATIONS
Disco Shed Meets BBC
INTRODUCTION We feel that there is a huge opportunity for the BBC to play into people’s habit and ritual of planning, but we don’t see it stopping there. There is a continuation of behaviours and actions that happen during and after that the BBC can use to build upon our theme:
“A platform that the BBC could use to engage with people (festival-goers) before the festival and continue the conversation after in a personalised way.” From the people we interviewed, we were able to clearly see the separation of what happens before, during and after.
Before
During
After
From this, we identified two major opportunity areas for BBC to discuss and explore potential design solutions.
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Opportunity Area 1:
NOT HAVING A PLAN, COULD BE THE BEST PLAN How might the BBC create a tool that helps groups plan their festival experience. Key Insight
Key Insight
Key Insight
1
2
3
Groups like to plan in packs. Preparing for the festival is very much group activity and part of the experience.
Plans were made before festival, but once people reached the festival, there was a “f*** it” attitude.
In-the-moment decisions were made based on proximity and interests, and could be influenced by strangers meet at the festival e.g. in a toilet queue.
“We do our own Spotify playlists and share with the group” - Naomi
Understanding People - DXD Crew 1 August 2015
“I realise there is so much more happening at the festival. Now I wanna see that new stuff too.” - Naomi
“I tend to get sidetracked once I’m at the festival. I make decisions based on where I am and what I am doing” - Joe
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WHAT LED US TO OUR INSIGHTS? Our findings indicated that before the festival, people made extensive plans. Shared Spotify (music) playlists starts group discussions about bands and shared lists on what to take to a festival and food runs to the supermarket, are part of buildingup the festival spirit in the group. On our way to The Edinburgh Fringe, we observed a group of train passengers pulling out 4 printed copies of an excel spreadsheet, which they had used to plan their festival itinerary. However, people adopted a more laissez faire attitude once they arrived. People want to explore their surroundings, free from a packed and fixed itinerary. People are more willing to go along with the flow, if their friends are involved. Joe, Heather, Karl and Naomi even took recommendations from people at the festival, which mainly happened while queuing.
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WHAT LED US TO OUR INSIGHTS?
Decisions become location and proximity based, spur of the moment; “Let’s see what’s happening over there”. Our findings were supported by Luxford and Dickinson (2015)’s research, that pre-event planning was important to people as they needed to achieve a sense of control. And during the festival, people liked to immerse themselves in the experience, in an environment that was carnivalesque (Storey, 2009), without distractions of having to monitor the time constantly and responding to changes in schedule at the festival. Having enough information and planning pre-event provided people with confidence to adapt and soak in new discoveries and experiences at the festival.
SURVEY DATA
Understanding People - DXD Crew 1 August 2015
We wanted to collect quantitative data to find out how common this attitude was within a larger sample size of festival goers (Seemann, 2012), so we conducted an online survey to validate our findings.
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SURVEY DATA
The results showed that this was, indeed, a common behaviour. What was interesting, was that it was even more common with women compared to men.
62% of the female respondents say they do a lot of planning before going the festival. This is true for only 17% of the men who filled in our survey. 88% of women say they prefer to go with the flow during the festival, compared to 55% of men.
SUMMARY
Understanding People - DXD Crew 1 August 2015
Our insights led us to the discovery that the BBC could play into the planning experience and spontaneity of real-time events during the festival. In the section ‘Next Steps’ on page xx, we discuss how design workshops could be had around digital platforms to help groups of friends plan and organise.
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Opportunity Area 2:
ENGAGEMENT IS IN How might the BBC create a platform that caters to exclusive and personalised content. Key Insight
Key Insight
Key Insight
1
2
3
Trying something new made festivals feel like a personal achievement.
Festival goers seeked niche experiences and liked exclusivity.
People at a festival wanted to be seen as an expert by their friends by opening them up to new places and events they discovered
“I watched my wife dance for the first time in 4 years”
“I like to meet people from other walks of life. Non-mainstream festivals should get more attention from BBC.”
“I went to Sziget and the next year I got more friends to go because I knew we’d have fun”
- Kerry, recounting what a festival goer commented to her after her show.
Understanding People - DXD Crew 1 August 2015
- Naomi
- Heather
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WHAT LED US TO THESE INSIGHTS? Our findings showed that people want to access exclusive content. They want to feel like they are social group leaders who provided friends with access to the best deals, niche and new experiences; they also want to be seen as the first to trying things. From all but one of the interviewees we spoke to, they were unaware of BBC content which satisfied this need. Naomi, felt that people see the BBC as a credible organisation, but wanted content that was edgy and relevant to her. Naomi said “I visit the BBC website for headlines and then I go to read the news on the Guardian�.
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PERSONALISATION
Because of this need and want for personalisation, BBC could potentially acquire new audiences if it catered to more niche and sub-cultures. A report by Marketing Magazine highlighted that while 72% of people found quality and relevance of products to be important, 60% found brand personality key to match who they are, what they like and how they do things.
CURRENT BBC PRODUCTS
From a music perspective, the BBC have great platforms that currently tap into more independent and alternative interests; Radio 4, Radio 6, Live Lounge etc. but the key is how to find those people from the festival with these interests, and connect them to wider learnings.
OPENNESS OF PEOPLE
In the brief, the BBC had highlighted that people are more open during a festival. We discovered that this openness led people to do things which they would not normally do back at home. For example, Joe visited a spiritual and well-being tent at the Glastonbury Festival. He had intriguing conversations with the people there, saying that “There’s no judgement and you are able to meet people from all walks of life”.
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SURVEY DATA
83% of the female respondents say at festivals they are more likely to meet people from different walks of life that they wouldn’t normally meet in their day-to-day life. This is true for only 67% of the men who filled in our survey. 93% of women say they are likely to follow up with a festival discovery or learning learning after the festival is over, compared to 86% of men.
SUMMARY
Understanding People - DXD Crew 1 August 2015
BBC could better engage people by creating meaningful experiences (Pine & Gilmore, 1998) that fulfilled their desire for discovering diverse interests, and helping to extend their discovery journey after the festival. It could help festival-goers remember (Manthiou, 2014) where they have been, the people they met and the new things they discovered. This will help the BBC connect people to new interests on other BBC platforms.
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Reccomendations
NEXT STEPS NEXT STEPS
We believe that the BBC needs to test low fidelity prototypes with potential users. To help our research team see where these insights could lead to, we brainstormed ideas around these two opportunity areas and found ourselves building one idea using characteristics that satisfied both opportunities; they merged into one platform.
Before
1 To cater to people’s need to plan as group, BBC could build a Tinder-like app for people to declare their interest in various events happening at a festival. Users will be able to swipe right or left as to whether they are interested in the act or not. Combining the interests of all group members, BBC could automatically generate an itinerary for them to print (we saw people with printed itineraries on the train to Edinburgh). Additionally, groups of friends could share their plans with other groups of friends for inspiration using a Pinterest-type platform.
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During
2 People will get a BBC wristband that will track their activity and attach it to locations. BBC photographers will be at the festival taking photos, that will also have locations and activities attached to them, helping to pinpoint specific times.
After
3 Back at home, people will be able to view a timeline and statistics on what they actually did and saw at the festival. They can link their wristband data to BBC ID and get personalised reading and interest recommendations based on that.
CONCLUSION
There is large opportunity for the BBC to connect with women before the festival and continue the conversation year-round. The big win for the BBC is the collection of people’s data in return for a service and platform that doesn’t exist. This will help to excite them before a festival and provide them with exclusive content relevant to their alternative interests through the rest of the year. We hope the BBC finds this information insightful and helps to inspire future design thinking in how to engage with women.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Cooper-Wright, Matt; Holland, Jenny (2015). [Lecture at Hyper Island, Manchester, UK, 3 Aug 2015] Hall, E. and Zeldman, J. (2013) Just enough research. New York: A Book Apart. Kolko, J. (2010) ‘Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking: The Drivers of Design synthesis’, Design Issues, 26(1). Kuniavsky, M., Moed, A. and Goodman, E. (2012) Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research. 2nd edn. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. Luxford, A. and Dickinson, J. E. (2015) ‘The Role of Mobile Applications in the Consumer Experience at Music Festivals’, Event Management, 19(1), pp. 33–46. doi: 10.3727/152599515x14229071392909. Manthiou, A., Seonjeong (Ally) Lee, Liang (Rebecca) Tang & Chiang, L. 2014, “The experience economy approach to festival marketing: vivid memory and attendee loyalty”, Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 22-35. Pine, J. & Gilmore, J. 1998, , Welcome to the Experience Economy. Available: https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy Portigal, S. (2013) Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights. Brooklyn, New York: Rosenfeld Media. Qu, Sandy Q.; Dumay, John (2011),”The qualitative research interview”, Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Vol. 8 Iss 3 pp. 238 - 264 Seemann, J. (2012) ‘Hybrid Insights: Where the Quantitative Meets the Qualitative’, Rotman Magazine, , pp. 57–61. Storey, J. (2009) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. 4th edn. Harlow, England: FT Prentice Hall. University of Surrey, I. of L. L. (2009) 4. Interviews. Available at: http://libweb. surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20and%20 Managing%20Information%20Leicester/page_55.htm (Accessed: 15 August 2015).
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