Exercise 1 - Victor Larsson
The participants were Josefine, 22, from Germany, Chris, 22, from Sidney and Caroline, 20, from Gothenburg, Sweden. The questions I asked were based on the following:
What are you looking for during a night out?
Preference? E.g. Clubs/bar? Dressed up/casual?
Where do you usually actually end up? Live up to expectations?
How did you end up there?
I got very similar results from all of the participants regarding where they want to go. They all preferred to go to smaller, casual night clubs or bars, mostly to hang out or just have a good time with friends. It was also these kinds of places they finally ended up in. Dancing was mentioned, but overall, a nice bar seemed to be the most appealing place to go.
The most interesting question was how they found a place to go to. They all answered that they would ask a friend if they knew any nice place, and they all said that they would use a search engine service like Google to try to find a place they like.
Facebook was also used to see what local people did in the evenings or nights, or just to see what the locals were talked about. Facebook’s “check-in” function was mentioned to see where people were.
Another solution was to simply ask the hotel staff or any local people if they knew any place near.
I think that you could say that the interviews results state that the majority of all want to go to a more casual place with few or no restrictions about clothing and they are most often in groups.
In summary, to find a place to go they would:
Use a search engine service to find a place
Ask local people or residence staff
This was very alike my personal beliefs and I think that there is a certain subgroup of tourists, young people around 22 years of age, who have common interests when it comes to nightlife. I would give similar answers to these questions.
State-of-the-art analysis
There are solutions available for finding night clubs and bars for various cities abroad. Clubs in Sweden had only a few options to choose from in contrast to New York or London, where I found a lot of options to choose from after a quick Google search for night clubs and bar in a particular area. Most of results were magazines ranking or rating the best clubs and bars in the local area.
I then tried to find any phone application that would help me find a club or a bar. There were only a few options to choose from, even for New York. For my state-of-the-art analysis I chose the application “Time Out” for android which should help me find any event that is happening in the area around New York. I thought it wouldn't hurt and also be interesting to see how an application was made which consists of many more bars and clubs than in Stockholm.
Most of the solutions I found also included restaurants, museums, shopping, walks and tours etc.
Analysis of “Time Out” android application
The objective is to find a club or bar which would fit the preferences that the person wants.
My experience with the application was not good. I tried to find a rock bar in Manhattan, but I never did. When I chose “Bars” and a never-ending list of bars was thrown at me. From that, where was no other option but to scroll thru, which I did for a few moments before I gave up.
The design was very simple and it works pretty well. It is a typical mobile interface which makes it easy to use because it is familiar. The design could be more interesting though.
From my experience I made the following summary.
Finds places locally from where you currently are.
Shows map and description how to get there (via Google Maps).
Shows details about transport, opening hours, price of an average drink and entry, specific info (e.g. cash only, wheelchair access etc.).
Has a “Critic’s picks” option which is nice, but I couldn’t find any information who these critics were.
Too many options if the objective is to find a club or a bar.
There are no way to specify what you like, e.g. music or style.
There are no sub-categories to choose from when the user is looking for a club. Only for bars.
Too little information about the club/bar when listed (the user has to click to see more information. Only the name and distance is given.).
Shows images of “Top 10 in New York” in the main menu, but no information about them if not clicked. This makes this function pretty useless I think.
The design is very boring. Although I think it’s good that it is simple, it could be a lot more eye-catching and maybe more contrast in the clickable and non-clickable elements.
I asked Josefine to try the application I chose to make my state-of-the-art analysis. Her task was simply to find a club or a bar she thought would be fine if she were around Times Square in New York City.
She chose to go to a bar, and the main menu that she first is met by was simple and it was no problem finding the “Bars nearby” button.
She then started scrolling in the list until she then saw the “Categories” button and pressed it.
She did a quick review about all the possible categories she would be interested in and chose “Neighborhood bars” option. She said she thought it seemed interesting.
New option were showed in a list and she began scrolling down and reading the names of the bars and looked at the one image showing the bar.
She clicked a few bars to read something about them and she said she only chose them by their “cool name” or nice image.
After a while of looking through the list with bars she went to the top of the list again and said that she would like to go to one of the bars in the top because it seemed nice by the image and didn’t seem to be too far away of her current location. She also said that it looked like the bar from “How I met your mother”, which made her make that choice.
Analysis of the observation
Images seemed to be very important when choosing a bar to go to. The simple choice in the main menu was also good which made the start of the search easy but it seemed to me that after the main menu, the navigation got more complicated.
When it came to choosing a bar to go to, I think it would be a lot more informative to maybe be able to read some reviews or see if someone really enjoyed being at the bar. There was no information more than simple facts about the bar when it was clicked. Like the interviews showed, a function like a Facebook “like” or “check-in” implementation would be highly appreciated.
For me, it seemed like there was no subgroup of tourist the application was made for, only that the user is a tourist and the solution didn’t seemed to be aimed at in any particular age range. The application included many, if not all, cultural activities a person could do, like museums, theatres, concerts etc. It also included restaurants. This can make the decision of choosing a club or a bar more complicated and may even scare people in our subgroup away that only is looking for a nice night out or a night of partying.
The solution I tried was a phone application, which has limitations. For example, the app must be made and optimized to several devices. Another difficulty with a phone application is that many tourists may not have internet available in their phones at all times.
Often there is internet available in the hotels where most people have their laptops. I think that a website could be a better option because it can be made responsive, which means that the website adapts to the device it is currently viewed in. This means that the website can be viewed in any device with a web browser.
I also believe that many of the current solutions are too wide in their range of activities. For our subgroup, that has the goal of finding a club or a bar, a more narrow range could lead to a better user experience.
