NJEA - MS SDM Spring 2020 Studio

EVENT ORGANIZATION APP April Wang, Jayde Pang, Roberta Morales

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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PROTOTYPES & TESTING

PG. 24

PG. 08

06

FINAL PRODUCT

PG. 33

03 ANALYSIS

PG. 12

07

CONCLUSION

PG. 44

04 SYNTHESIS

PG. 18

01

BRIEF

02 RESEARCH

PG. 06

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OUR TEAM

APRIL WANG

JAYDE PANG

ROBERTA MORALES

Sociologist from Henan, China

Accountant from New York, USA

Architect and Interior Designer from Monterrey, México

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CLIENT BACKGROUND Our project is about the educational advocacy association – a state-level teachers’ association that has over 150,000 members. The association has a history of over a hundred and fifty years, and it has become the largest organization for teachers in the state. The association has a very special event, the annual convention, that happens every year in its long history - the annual convention.

The association has developed a pretty mature principle to run the convention and offering professional training activities like seminars and workshops during the convention. Also, it has established the convention committee that gathers a group of members particularly in charge of planning and operating the annual convention. Just like any other big conference, the convention has its organizer, attendees, cooperators, and the sponsors. In recent years, the convention is held in a very big convention center where allows over 20,000 people to attend at the same time. However, the convention has been losing attendees. In 2013, there were about 7200 people in attendance. Since 2013, there has been a steady decline in attendance, an average of 3-5%, each year, representing fewer than 4.3% of the union’s over 150,000 active members.

Therefore, our task is to learn more about member’s attitudes, behaviors, and preferences to recommend changes that would provide more value for and make the convention more attractive to members.

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5

01

BRIEF

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Revitalize the Annual Educational Convention for a Union. This 150yr old institution has held an annual convention every year since its founding. Even so, the last couple of years, they have suffered from a constantly decreasing 3-5% attendance.

What can we learn about our members’ attitudes, behaviours, and preferences to that will make the convention more successful and more attractive to members?

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02

RESEARCH

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PRIMARY RESEARCH In discussing the brief with the client, we had a general idea on why numbers were decreasing, such as: the location being too far for many people, the cost of attendance was too high for young professionals who have student debt and a lack of motivation to attend.

Given the fact that there were so many parameters with which to deal with and approach the problem, we turned to the guidance of the Cynefin Framework. This allowed us to locate the brief within the Complex quadrant, allowing us to frame our subsequent research while keeping this in mind.

Our first step was to validate our initial assumptions using first hand research. We started to do that by conducting various in-depth interviews with teachers around the state.

Here is what we learned about the various attitudes towards the annual convention: Those who attended thought that the convention was very valuable and well thought out for teaching professionals.

Members who attend every year tend to be very involved in the convention itself.

Those who attended only one year mentioned the lack of diversity within the convention program and the inconvenience of the location.

Those who have never attended indicated that they are so burnt out from work, that given a chance to take a break during the school year, they would prefer to take it instead of attending the convention.

The younger attendees valued the professional development sessions on inclusivity, while the older attendees valued the professional development sessions on technology.

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INTERVIEWS ERICA N.

“I’d love to go but I don’t really know anything about the conference.”

“I go every year, but only for a day, i’m too busy to go all weekend.”

“ There’s no courses for me at the conference, I teach art and music. ” NICOLE S.

“I went the 1st year but I couldn’t afford it the last couple of years. ” SEAN F.

“I feel like there is so much value added everytime I attend.”

MIKE M.

JEN P. 10

SECONDARY RESEARCH After gathering al the primary research we could get our hands on, our second step was to take a dive into the hard data available to further explore our assumptions. This is where we ran into a hitch (and the story gets interesting!),we were unable to get direct raw data from the educational group due to privacy concerns.

This eventually turned into a complete loss of our client.

They were no longer able to work with us and any and all research we had previously gathered had to be anonimized. Given that our brief was very specific an relied heavily on data from our client, we were taken aback. We didn´t know what road to take, as our previous one had just been torn out from under us. Nevertheless, we persevered and found a new, even bigger possible client for our research, Educational Associations all over the world.

Based on secondhand data we were able to find the following:

97%

55%

3%

of atendees travel 1+ hours

of atendees travel 2+ hours

of atendees travel <1 hours

25% of total sessions are STEM oriented

*Information based on estimates using the general population of the state

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18% of total sessions are arts / language oriented

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ANALYSIS

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UNION: SWOT ANALYSIS STRENGTHS

OPPORTUNITIES

Well respected organization* Attractive program contents * Networking opportunities* Power in numbers*

*Disagregated conference *Online courses *Flexible programming *Year round learning opportunities *Direct Communication

WEAKNESSES

THREATS

Time consuming* Atendees location widely spread* Required investment* Access to information*

*Online courses available on educational platforms * Specialized / diversified conferences *Lack of integration into busy lives

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UNION: BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS KEY PARTNERS

KEY ACTIVITIES

VALUE PROPOSITIONS

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

CONVENTION CENTER

PROVIDING PD EVENTS

HERITAGE / TRADITION

COMMUNICATION

TEACHERS IN THE STATE

HOTELS

FUNDRAISING FOR UNION

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

COMMUNICATION

SPEAKERS & EXHIBITORS

STAFF / SECURITY

TEACHER SUPPORT OPERATIONS

CONTINUED EDUCATION TEACHER SUPPORT

SCHOOLS UNION MEMBERS

EXISTING MEMBERS

KEY RESOURCES

SPONSORS

NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES

CHANNELS

MAIN OFFICES

LOCAL REPS

ONLINE PLATFORM

WEBSITE / MOBILE APP

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

SCHOOLS

UNION STAFF

EXISTING UNION MEMBERS

COST STRUCTURE

REVENUE STREAMS

VENUE SPACE RENT

IT

EVENT STAFF

SECURITY STAFF

NON MEMBER TICKET SALES

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SPONSORSHIPS

MEMBER FEES

UNION: ECOSYSTEM MAP

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CUSTOMER JOURNEY

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CUSTOMER (EMOTIONAL) JOURNEY

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TRANSPORTATION When it comes to the transportation towards events or conventions, our team discovered seceral great pain points that hindered attendance. Given the lack of adecuate and efficient public transportation to and from events, members incur personal monetary expenses while having to travel in a private car. Gas, insecurity and all that comes with it all play a crucial part in whether or not a member will attend the event. Through interviews we also found out that the majority of our possible atendees were stuck in traffic several hours, not just because of the physical distance of the convention space but because of traffic jams created by the size of the event itself.

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04

SYNTHESIS

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LACK OF PROPER COMMUNICATION CHANNELS Because our original client was a union, in order for there to be any type of communication between the organizers and the atendees, there were about 4 people in between. This meant that information was not arriving properly, falling victim to becoming a â&#x20AC;&#x153;broken telephoneâ&#x20AC;?, by the time the message got to the person that needed it, it had transformed. There was no way to reach the milennial audience that did not know enough people within the system to get the information properly. This not only affected milenialls, but teachers of all age groups, who dependend on their schools for any events communication.

OVREWHELMING PROGRAM What became glaringly obvious was that the convention pamphlet itself was overwhelming and packed with information. There was no clear guide to the most important and relevant sections, which left us with a visually chaotic problem. This problem becomes more acute when we factor in that the older generations tend to be more comfortable with the print pamphlet than the online/app version, which requires a password and login to access. The population this pamphlet is supposedly specifically designed for has to hassle with it for at least 2 hours to make sense of it, creating unnecessary complexity during the registration / scheduling process.

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INFORMATION DELAY This undoubtedly led to an information delay. As a teacher wanting to go to a conference or event, you had to sift through websites, flyers, memos and scheduling programs in order to figure out what courses you wanted to attend. Eventually, some teachers lost interest and decided it was not worth the hassle of figuring it all out in order to attend. This created a further loss in atendees.

LOCATION & TIME CONSTRAINTS Lastly, the location and time commitment of the convention posed a large obstacle for the attendees. The convention was located at almost the southernmost tip of the state, where people lived sparsely. In gathering our data, we learned that most members travelled uncomfortable amounts of time to get to the convention. This analysis does not include extra time for increased traffic. In addition, the convention is a two day event. With attendees driving that far, they would have to get a hotel room and stay over to attend the second day. The time commitment required at the current location proved too much for many attendees.

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LOSS OF ROOTS Another insight we ran accross was that very few atendees knew the WHY of the conference in the first place. Why is there a gigantic conference every year? Why is it always in the same place? Why should we attend? Why does the union put so much time and effort into this? Atendees had forgotten why the events were important, and because this information wasn´t available to them, they felt it did not matter.

WHY DOES THE CONVENTION EXIST? WHY?

Well, It’s tradition

WHY?

Because it’s a statewide gathering

It’s an opportunity to train members

WHY?

You help teachers work better

WHY?

Better teachers = better union

When we get to the roots of the convention, we realize that the convention itself is not as importance as we once thought, what matters more is the professional advancement of members to create a stronger union as a whole. With this insight we can focus on what really matters and possibly eliminate unecessary spending.

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COMPETITOR ANALYSIS SCHEDULING

CONFERENCES / CONVENTIONS

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

MEETUP EVENTBRITE FACEBOOK EVENTS TICKETMASTE R LETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S PLAN

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LOCATION SERVICES

PERSONALIZATION

TICKETING

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PROTOTYPES & TESTING 24

VALUE PROPOSITION: TEACHERS ONLINE

ACCESSIBLE

REAL TIME UPDATES

Learn wherever you are

Designed for all ages

Fast Information Delivery

PERSONALIZED

EASE OF USE

FLEXIBLE

Filter what you want to learn and see

Check your schedule and sync with your calendars

Adjust courses to your time availability

VALUE PROPOSITION: EVENT COORDINATORS AUDIENCE EXPANSION

TICKETING

REAL TIME UPDATES

Expand your reach and network

Automatic QR ticketing for attendees

Pain free headcount before arrival

PERSONALIZED

LIVE STREAMING

TRIAL USE

Filter what kind of teachers you want to receive your featured events

Option to live stream directly on your events page

Try it out, then pay!

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OUR THREE KEY FEATURES Since we had two main stakeholders to cater to, we decided to separate our value proposition into three clear categories (shown below).

CONTENT CURATION

NETWORKING

EVENTS MANAGEMENT

This iteration of the app focuses on curating content specifically for professional development.

Through personalization, the app delivers courses sourced from the world´s top universities and filters them through topic, length and educational level. There are features within the app that allow for the tracking of your course accomplishments, rewarding you every time you finish a course. This allows you to keep track of your development as well as motivate you to learn even more.

The networking focus of the app tries to encourage teachers to create work groups where they can easily talk about the subjects that are of interest to them at the moment. All of this is accomplished through the filtering of people within your network to create the most efficient and development friendly threads. All with the common focus of helping teachers and their students learn better and more efficiently.

The events management focus of the app has as a principal goal to increase awareness of the events available for teachers no matter their location and the easy access to them.

There are several features within the app that help with this endeavour; events are personalized to educatorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; specific interests. From there the app allows teachers to search events near them, all while providing easy scheduling access and all the information necessary to attend the event at your fingertips.

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FIRST ITERATIONS

Featured courses on your front page

Watch at your own time

Easily access your current courses

Keep track of your learning with our medals!

View your network´s comments on the course

CONTENT CURATION 27

FIRST ITERATIONS

Filter networking options through interest

Set a topic, make a thread, get to work

All your teaching contacts in one place

Display the projects youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re working on

Locate your friends and create a group!

NETWORKING 28

FIRST ITERATIONS

Never miss out on a learning opportunity again!

Keep track of events happening around you

Find key resources for the event and a quick intro

Filter events through topic and save them

Subject, location and host at the touch of a finger

Find key resources for the event and a quick intro

EVENTS MANAGEMENT 29

REVIEWS MONICA M.

“This would be great if i could link it to my school´s agenda!”

“Is it free?

Can I see courses that my school is hosting too?”

“Give me some color coding! The blue is making me dizzy ” CECILIA A.

“I love being able to find people with my same interests” MARIA A.

“This will save me SO much travel time! Now I can actually attend courses” SAM R.

ERICA W. 30

WHAT PEOPLE SAID Our next step was figure out which one of our iterations presented the most value for our clients through interviews and product testing. Because of the COVID19 pandemic, this presented a couple of limitations. First of all, we couldn´t test in person, which meant we conducted all of our interviews through Zoom. These interviews were done one on one, where our possible stakeholder was going through an interation of our app in order for us to figure out the pain points and evolve accordingly. What follows are the conclusions from our testing.

CONTENT CURATION

NETWORKING

EVENTS MANAGEMENT

33%

11%

56%

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SECOND ITERATIONS & FOCUS

EVENTS MANAGEMENT 32

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FINAL PRODUCT

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LET´S PLAN ( THE APP! )

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ONBOARDING

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FEATURED EVENTS

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DESIGNED FOR YOU

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NEWS & SEARCH

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SCHEDULING

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LETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S PLAN: BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS KEY PARTNERS EDUCATION ASSOCIATIONS

KEY ACTIVITIES EVENT INFO. RELAY

ACCREDITATION PROGRAMS

VALUE PROPOSITIONS

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

FOR EDUCATORS:

ACCESIBILITY

CONNECTING EVENTS TO EDUCATORS

EDUCATORS / ATTENDEES

CONNECTING EDUCATORS TO PD

EDUCATION ASSOCIATIONS

INCORPORATION INTO PERSONAL LIFE

SCHOOLS & DISTRICTS

KEY RESOURCES ONLINE PLATFORM ASSOCIATION EVENTS

EASE OF SCHEDULING

EVENT COORDINATORS

CHANNELS

FOR EVENT COORDINATORS:

APP / PLATFORM

DIRECT ROUTE TO EDUCATORS

ASSOCIATION EVENTS

IT EMPLOYEES USERS (TEACHERS)

COST STRUCTURE IT / PLATFORM CREATION

FURTHER EVENT REACH

REVENUE STREAMS ADMINISTRATIVE & OPERATIVE COSTS

SPONSORSHIPS

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FREEMIUM MODEL

ADVERTISEMENTS

STAKEHOLDER IMPACT Below is an analysis of the stakeholder impact of our platform based on our initial value propositions. This is what we believe will be the main addition for our different groups of stakeholders.

THE ASSOCIATION

SCHOOLS & EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

END USERS (TEACHERS)

INVESTORS

Bring them back to the “root”

Better info delivery & organizing

Easy & Personalized way to learn

Opportunities in the education industry

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FINANCIAL OVERVIEW Freemium Model: Event Coordinators

Paid for by event coordinators

Free Membership: Teachers

First 2 Featured Events Free

Featured Events page works as ad platform

Tiered pay flat fee ( per ticket service fee that decreases as event attendees decrease)

> 100 > 500 > 1,000 > 10,000

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MARKET LAUNCH STRATEGY

PARTNERSHIPS

MARKETING

LAUNCH

Partner up with event coordinators

Make our product known

Launch to public

1

2

3

4

SEED MONEY

BETA TESTING

Finish building the MVP.

Improve product based on feedback from partners and users

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06

CONCLUSION

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WHAT WE ACHIEVED Research & Analysis

This project provides us with an opportunity to apply research methods, data analysis, and marketing strategies that we learn from the readings and the lectures in a real-world setting. We collected a lot of valuable secondary data through our client, online articles, and some industry research; In addition, we collected primary data through in-depth interviews, immersion, and surveys. Then we selected, managed, and analyzed our data through several tools such as user journey, personas, and business model canvas. Then we concluded and digitalized the insights that we gained from all previous processes. Later, we came up with the solution, designed our prototype, and practiced it with the marketing strategies that we learned from the class. Overall, it’s a useful experience for us to apply what we learned and make it into a detailed, mature business plan.

Think Out of The Box

In the middle stage of our project, we had to terminate the cooperation with our clients for some reason. We initially saw it as a terrible situation, because most of our assumptions at that time were closely related to the special circumstances of the client. For example, “the largest teachers’ organization in the state” provides a strong guarantee for the feasibility of our design. Also, most of our early design assumptions were based on the prerequisites of “once a year” and “one location”. So the loss of customers brought our team to a bottleneck.

But through several discussions in the class, we absorbed the suggestions from both our professors and classmates, and we began to treat it as a challenge. Soon after several discussions in our team, we found that “without a client” in fact is an opportunity for us to create, to think out of the box, and to ignore the pre-settings of “once a year at the same location”. We could just focus on designing something that can better deliver our value proposition to the users, no matter how. Then we came up with the rough idea of breaking down the big convention into small events and let our users, either association members or teachers that are nonmembers but still want to get trained, pick whatever they want to attend, whenever they are available, and wherever they physically are.

Teamwork

Three of us in our team come from three countries and three different academic backgrounds. Roberta, with strong skills in visual design, led the whole process of designing, prototyping, and iteration. Jayde, who comes from New Jersey, has the social circle with local teachers, where we gained all of our interviewees in the early research stage and the testing process. She led most of our interviews and many writing tasks. April´s strong analysis and synthesis skills led the team towards innovative solutions for the issues faced, redirecting our gaze where it was most needed.

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POSSIBLE USES: BEYOND OUR CLIENT While our event planning and designing tool was inspired by a two day state wide teacher convention, it could potentially be used for other types of large scale events and industries where people would want to continue their professional development in person. Given the recent pandemic, we believe that our platform could become a jumping off point to create organized, controlled and scheduled educational content. All while providing an option to participate from a distance.

Our platform could be used for events such as: Trade shows Workshops Conventions Conferences Seasonal festivals

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RESOURCES & CREDITS We would like to thank all the teachers and convention coordinators who participated in our informational interviews and prototype tests, their information was invaluable. For privacy reasons their names have been redacted. But you know who you are!

All of the work in this book was co-authored by the team: April Wang, Jayde Pang and Roberta Morales.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Google Maps Freepik Images Flaticon Images King, A.M. (2017, Decemeber 18). Replacing Lectures with Small Groups: The Impact of Flipping the Residency Conference Day. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Laubheimer, P. (2019, August 11). The 3-Click Rule for Navigation is False. The NN Group United States Census Bureau

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THE END.

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