ISLE - Live like a Greek for a day
self-directed learning; framing & strategizing; concept & ideation; creating & crafting; reflection & awareness;
Introduction
ISLE is a service that aims to transfer the Greek experience to travelers visiting the Greek islands by guiding them to live one or more days as if they were Greeks. Through the ISLE smartphone application, the traveler selects a virtual local Greek persona to live by today and is being navigated to the places that represent the persona’s summer habits: sun, sea, coffee, ouzo, food, cultural events, bringing them closer to local products, experiences and people. Travelers are led to sights but also to affiliated local businesses that wish to be promoted through ISLE. It proposes a simple but dynamic revenue stream model that favors local society and all the stakeholders involved. ISLE was developed by Konstantinos Partheniadis and George Kordatos and is currently in the second and last phase of the Aegean Startups competition 2018. Visit ISLE on isle.homeip.net. The ISLE project was developed from zero during the second semester of MSc in Digital Design. The project has high relevance with the studies for the master degree in terms of framing & strategizing, concept & ideation, creating & crafting and self-directed learning.
Timeline of Events
31 January - Meeting Konstantinos & George, Brainstorming
05 February - Konstantinos, Idea Description
05 February - George, Website Start
10 February - Konstantinos, Website Host at Home Server
13 February - George, Competition and Moodboards
15 February - Konstantinos & PhD Expert Feedback, Idea Description Iteration
22 February - Konstantinos & Business Expert Feedback, Idea Revenues Iteration
24 February - Konstantinos & Traveler Expert Feedback, Idea Description Iteration
25 February - Skype Konstantinos & George, Ideation Session & Website Feedback
25 February - Konstantinos, Sketching
26 February - Konstantinos & George, Low Fidelity UIs
27 February - Konstantinos, UIs Finalize & Logo Design
01 April - Idea Submission at Aegean-Startups.gr
17 May - George, Connection with Aris Entrepreneur willing to help
31 May - Skype, Aegean Startup Seminar for Final Phase
30 July - Business Plan Submission (doing)
The ISLE culture
Visitors of Greece usually admire the ancient story of the Greek, but they will hardly understand their way of life (Stereotyping Greeks, 2017) unless they try it themselves. Understanding a culture requires one to think as the local society does and to interact with it. “If we travel with our eyes and minds open, we place ourselves in a position to observe and appreciate cultural difference” (Sturges, 2005). The aim of ISLE is to communicate to the traveler the passion of Greeks to live in the present time. To let them live carefree of their personal problems for one day. To identify themselves with the local culture. To experience the little things that people from a different ethnicity value highly in their routines. To try. To enjoy. To drop their stereotypes. To reflect on their own outlook about life. How? Through the observation and active participation in a dynamic scenario that guides them through the simple rituals of people of a different culture on an island far away from their homeland.
The Experience
ISLE attempts to deliver a meaningful and genuine experience to the travelers. Firstly, by a mobile application that provides the digital experience, and secondly by interacting with the physical environment, the people and the activities of the island. Through the application the traveler selects how intensely they want to live their day by choosing a virtual Greek persona: Like Aris? 27-year-old, exploratory, romantic, shy, drinking beer without alcohol? Like Helen? 20 years old, hyperactive, dramatic, extrovert, ouzo-lover? Or like Panos, Evangelia and Manolis who are somewhere in between? Then, the application navigates the traveler along those spots that fascinate the chosen persona and advises them about their habits in the real context.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new lands but in seeing with new eyes” - Marcel Proust, French novelist.
Personas
ISLE’s personas are virtual figures that will be the result of ethnographic research and will be able to reflect local groups of each island. The personas are 3 to 5 for each island. Each persona will lead the traveler to different "pathways" of experience with unique combinations of activities. Similarly to the personas, some activities are more intense than the others:
Coffee: Traditional Coffee, Modern Coffee, Coffee-Ouzeri. Food: Gourmet, Restaurant, Souvlaki, Meze, Tavern with live music. Drinks: Traditional Ouzeri, Beer, Bars, Clubs. Nature: Fishing, Bicycling, Walking, Chansing the sun. Beach: Swimming on a secluded beach, beach bar. Shopping: Local Products, Cellars, Patisseries, Markets. Entertainment: Summer Cinema, Dance, Fairs, Local Events.
Strengths
Little Competition: Recent statistics show that 75% of today's travelers spend a lot of time using travel apps (marketing insights 2016, 2017) - Google Maps, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, Culture Trip, Cool Cousin. 86% of them are immediately disappointed by poor user experience. For people that are on vacation the problem is that finding a good destinations takes time; search for places around, filter and sort by rating, pricing, distance, see pictures, read reviews, choose destinations, organize them on lists, see them on the map. Competitive applications like the aforementioned forget that the traveler is on vacation and demand their attention. And they do well, because their aim is to provide them with good information to make up a good decision.
On the contrary, ISLE prepares for them an experience that reflects what the locals like to do in their summer. It leads them to the beloved points of every person, but does not push them to be faithful to the plan; the traveler is free to explore anything around and the system completely understands it (no need to make a u-turn anymore).
In the Competition Map we can see how ISLE is positioned in relation to the direct competitors - Trip Advisor, Google Maps, Forsquare, Cool Cousin. The Uber service is used as a reference to understand how a simple mobile app enhances real-life experiences directly. The hand map on top-right reminds us the complexity of using a map to coordinate in the physical world. Luckily today's traveler apps have simplified the map experience although, still requiring much effort to find, save, organize and navigate through Points Of Interest. ISLE makes an attempt to simplify the exploration experience by taking users trough a single-day journey from spots that are meaningful for the local personas. This way the traveler can easier and more effectively reflect on the local culture. ISLE provides an effortless traveler experience that is worth trying at least a day during the vacations. The content of the application is simple and the design elements are striped down to the core (see map, timeline, avatar selection). ISLE creators believe minimum User Interface is the way to achieve maximum User Experience.
Profitable and Flexible Business Model: ISLE has revenue only through the affiliated local businesses. It is a form of alternative advertising for local business people. This means a healthy digital experience: free app to download, no in-app ads. Hidden cafes and bars, small shops with local products, etc., can all be displayed if they wish directly to the travelers via ISLE. The entrepreneur agrees to pay a fixed amount for every traveler from ISLE who arrives and stays at their shop whether the traveler purchases something or not. The entrepreneur has the freedom to choose the amount they wants to pay. The larger the choice, the more likely it is to get travelers to their business instead of the competitors. The system creates a small competition within the affiliated businesses but they have nothing to lose with their participation even at the cheapest plan of 1€ per traveler. The business has the ability to win back € 1 charged from the service, as ISLE has prepared the traveler with a good mood to try the experience they offer there. The risk of damage that a local business can have from participating in ISLE is negligible as, if 1 in 10 travelers make at least one purchase of 10€, they have zeroed out the cost of all the 10 travelers. If the company is not satisfied, it may at any time discontinue its cooperation with ISLE.
Independence: ISLE has no control over what the customer purchases. Its role is to direct the customer to the businesses. This method ensures that the entrepreneur will do the best to keep the customer-traveler and hopefully make extra profit that they wouldn’t have the ability to make otherwise. It is up to the entrepreneur to leverage their business, behave properly to the customer and promote their products.
Precautious: ISLE takes care to be aware of what is happening and to create a sense of contact with both the stakeholders - the traveler and the tourist - through the implementation of digital design and digital interactions. For example: "If you were satisfied with the experience at this spot, click YES. If NO, you can make your complaint here."
Team Capabilities: The two group members, Konstantinos Parthenidis and George Kordatos are both product designers. They are in the process of recruiting people to cooperate in the following areas: entrepreneurship and management, software development, legals and marketing.They have contacts with Android and iOS developers and intend to quickly prototype the service after some funds are being granted. The project is separated into stages of Research, Design, Development and Promotion before Launch.
Scalable: ISLE is a startup, a new business move. And like all startups it has to start small. It can potentially take on large dimensions on more islands and cities in Greece and abroad. It has social benefits as it brings the traveler with habits and elements of local culture at a lower level than other applications achieve. Design, aims to show that a travel application does not need to be rich in content to communicate to the explorer the local lifestyle. It promotes entrepreneurial innovation in Greece by inspiring local entrepreneurs to diversify from others and follow modern business models (see Uber Eats) that will bring them additional profits with no effort. ISLE As a start-up, takes its baby steps and aims to be developed for the island of Syros, a small island in the Aegean Sea, in which the owners of the idea have lived as students and know it well. The service is applicable to more islands to which it can potentially bring social and economic benefits.
Reflection
The ISLE service is inspired by Stuart Walker’s and Simon Shuttle’s ideologies about creating products that create value to the life of people. Walker, in his latest book underlines that modern day products eradicate elements that help in reflection and awareness (’Design for Life’, 2017). Shuttle has been talking since 2005 (’Engineering Emotional Values in Product Design’, 2005) about products that produce value to users by stimulating emotion - through experimentation, expectation, mystery, reflection - and logic - through understanding, clarification and recognition (Kelly Goto, 2015).
Societal awareness: ISLE addresses the problem of digital isolation by taking travelers out in the wild, in the unknown. It tries to excite users rather than give them the information asked to consume. It addresses the problem of mainstream traveling by helping travelers detach from tourist groups and explore on their own by their senses. It intrigues the curious ones by letting them step into the shoes of a local person with the Personas. To put it simply, it enables them experience how a local person takes charge of their day. It gives them more contextual and relevant hints about the foreign culture that they can return it back to their country in the form of exciting experiences full of mystery, excitement, weird things, new things, unfamiliar or familiar things. It promotes reflection and engagement with the different culture. Ultimately, we hope that this small service can strikes social change, ideology swift and create a new need: to explore more Personas from different lands across the globe. It could be that ISLE is the beginning of a new way to take a step deeper into cultures we have only heard of before.
Relevance to MSc Digital Design
The idea of ISLE was born soon after the beginning of the second semester during MSc Digital Design. In one week the team cooperated remotely through video calls to frame the problem, the idea, think of the business model and the revenue streams, eliminate assumptions, and write down core elements of the concept. Practically, George would focus on finding image references, making the website work, and I would focus on composing the text that would describe the idea for the challenge and for the website both in Greek and English. I interviewed a tourist expert and enthusiastic traveler herself, who visits the island of Syros every summer. I requested from her to write two short user journeys of typical people of Syros. In this way she helped us shape the concept through her eyes too. I developed sketches of the digital user experience so that they would reflect our main concept of keeping the digital experience to the bare minimum. The aim was to detach the user from the smartphone apps and create a reason for them to arrive somewhere and learn more about the place, its people and the activities that take place there. I designed wireframes with medium-fidelity to communicate also what content will be shown to the traveler and the entrepreneur. Try the simple interaction with ISLE on Figma!
We asked relatives for their point of view, friends for their feedback, business experts for feedback on the revenue streams, designers in our network for feedback on the user journey and the experience. The iterations were quickly done by sharing a copy of the idea document and letting people we asked suggest changes and make comments. We developed the website quickly using Adobe Dreamweaver and a free responsive html template. I hosted the website at my fathers home sever to make use of our own technological resources and prototype the idea quickly. This made ISLE reflect that it is well-thought, and it’s closer to reality than it would be if we just described it through words. The Low Fidelity User interfaces helped the judges and the crowd understand how the system would work in their hands without getting into aesthetic details and commentary. On April 19th, ISLE was announced that it made it to the second and last phase of the Aegean Startup competition. We have since started developing a business plan with mentors and professionals. We are connecting through LinkedIn, reading about startups, asking people for acquaintances to join us in our ISLE journey. We plan to create a high fidelity design soon that will incorporate also microinteractions to add personal and relevant value to the context of the surroundings of the traveler like, type ‘kalimera’ to start, ‘loading sunrise’, show persona’s attributes with animations, use bluetooth beacons or wi-fi hotspots to trigger events in the UI and enhance the environment. My participation at two Yes!Delft Startup weeks for another project is helping with the mentality to take the step and bring your ideas to the crowd. As a lesson from Yes!Delft, we need to make validate the ISLE concept with travelers and entrepreneurs, discuss their needs and opinions on the experience we have designed so far. Digital Design is about leveraging digital tools and design thinking to deliver meaningful products that address the needs of multiple stakeholders. As long as these needs are validated, we can monetize these products and step into the game of start-up entrepreneurship with confidence.
“Ow! That sound cool!” -Edwin D’Mello
“I would love to try this thing the next time I go to Greece!” -Roselinde Loeffen
“I can even imagine this thing happening in Amsterdam! Would be fun to live my day as if I was Mitchel” -Pinar Kesenci