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Competitive Analysis

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System thinking

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Value Proposition

Locavores is a platform to connect tourists who want to get authentic food experience and better understand local culture and locals who want to learn different cultures in a world. Unlike Trip Advisor or Yelp, Locavores deepen understanding for different regional foods, people and cultures. 

Others

For travelers who want to get authentic food experience and understand local culture, Locavores is a platform for cultural travel by connecting tourists and locals to experience local food gems. Unlike Trip Advisor or Yelp, Locavores deepen connection of local food, people and culture. 

Locavores is a platform to connect tourists and locals for the tourists who need to have authentic local food experience and immerse themselves in a local culture. Unlike Trip Advisor and Yelp, Locavores is experiencing traditional food that represents a region and deepening understanding of local culture.

For travelers who want to understand local culture through authentic food experience, Locavores is a platform to bring the travelers food and cultural travel. Unlike Trip Advisor or Yelp, Locavores deeply connect the tourists to local food gems, locals and culture.

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Ideas + Criteria Matrix

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Meetup Reflection

After running the two meetups with strangers and having lunch together with them to share cultural cuisine in New York City, I found the value brought to me is not just the delicious food itself, but also the knowledge and understanding of each other’s culture and society.  So I think of the possible relationships, including a relationship between foods and people, the relationship between people and people, and the relationship between culture and culture, which means cultural exchange.  In current concept, the main stakeholders are tourists, locals, and local restaurants owners, but it also indirectly influences other stakeholders, such as local farmers, local agriculture, local economic development, and even local sustainable tourism development. They are related and are likely an ecosystem.

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Concept Summary

Connect tourists and locals to discover local food gems

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Feedback for Concept of  Streamlined Meetup

Do I have to dine with the local? can I just get the recoomedation? 

Separate dish from resturant? (AF)

It is still unclear what the incentive is to?  full out all of the information? for someone to pay 60%? This could also be award.

It might be helpful to ask in your interview: 1. how they show people around their hometowns?  2. how they decide where to take visitors?  3. what visitors must eat? 4. what are painpoints? 

Clarify “ Engaging“

Can people record vidoe instead of writing?

I think you are covering too much on xx as the way people learn

Where is the food story?

Video+images+text?

Too much info on the screen at once, hard to process

authentic does not always mean local?

It would be nice to see a use flow?

What about mobile?

Try to simplify this to the basic info an eater wants. Other sites are stressful because there is too much info. such as Yelp.

Atmosphere is important/ food is great, but the experience is important! like is this quite? good for a group? good for a date?

Simpler onboarding process could be helpful?

Is email+phone verification enough? can they choose how much they want to pay?

Do you really need to know the ingredients in the local food?

Maybe only highlight the city-and the particular food that they are famous for, like 5-10 top foods only?

Will an email be sent as well as in-app message? some people may not have the app open that could miss a message.

How people will find this platform?

Thoughts for testing prototype: Online interview / Offline food event.

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Prototype Reflections

Write down what you've learned from presenting your prototype, what new ideas you got, and what parts you might discard or pivot from.

New Idea1: think about a combination of best local food recommendation and best restaurants to eat that food. And begin with recommendation authentic local food based on city/country Hypothesis: If there is a way to connect tourists and locals and make them engaging,  it will be easier for tourists to have authentic local experience. Concept clarification: what is the meaning of authentic? What is the meaning of engaging? Authentic local food can represent that city and local food culture. Question: will it be useful and interesting to show a summary of local food culture? Benefits for local people:  maybe local restaurants could provide a discount for local people after they bring guests or their recommendation bring more online traffic to local restaurant website. Reduce information cluster, when in the page of the full menu, it shows what local people recommend, what on the page of restaurant, just show why local people think it is authentic. Meetup local people should separate from reviewing a recommendation from local people. They will be different steps and show on two screens.

New idea2: meetup, change the whole flow and just keep the final ending part, which is about sharing a meal in a good authentic local restaurant. Begin with choose people who have recommended food or restaurant to meetup?   Questions: what motivate tourists to meet up local people? What flow will be more acceptable and also distinguish with existing marketing competitors?

Other feedback: will the survey be the first step in the flow?  what will happen at the true restaurant? how do they schedule to meet up? Will give more options for meet at the begining part? such as Mondays                  Morning                  Afternoon                  Evening Safety consideration? Group? Social networking needs to be built up more to set it apart from finding English reviews on Google. The League of Kitchens is an immersive culinary adventure in NYC where immigrants teach an intimate cooking workshop in their homes.

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Assumption Map

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Feedback about User Research

In order to learn if the solution can help travelers effectively enhance food experience while traveling abroad, if information contributes to making a decision from restaurant selection to local food picked out and what they think of the overall user experience, I conducted user testing with sixteen American people. The age range was from 22 years old to 49 years old. Their average annual income was $740,000. And every interviewee has traveled more than one country where local people speak non-English or other languages that some interviewees are not able to speak as well, like French or Spanish.

During the process of reviewing the prototype, I requested the interviewees to complete an attitudinal survey with a 5- point scale that was used for me to analyze if the solution was effective and efficient for travelers to enhance local food experience. 

Most of interviewees though key information about a local restaurant such as average price, special dishes, rating and service were pretty helpful for them to make a decision for choosing a local restaurant while they stood in the front of the restaurant and use a mobile app to scan the restaurant for overall impression.  Some of them mentioned that they wanted to see the full menu to better understand before walking into the local restaurant. Because special dishes were recommended by the local restaurant. They might not be interested in that part. After they view full menu, they can have better ideas if they want to choose the local restaurant.

For scanning local menu and auto-translating local language into English were favorable to all interviewees. They thought they could well understand the local menu without other’s help or they did not need to input local language to Google Translator one by one, which could save them a lot of time and effort.

They believed that two prices displayed along with each dish were creative good idea. Since local price for a dish has been translated into US dollar based on current rate of exchange that were displayed on individual mobile phone screen. They did not need to spend time in doing math in order to see if the price of a dish was too high or acceptable. 

When reviewing detail screen of a specific dish, interviewees stated that aggregating reviews from different social networks were direct channel for obtaining important feedback from other customers about the quality of food provided. Therefore, they did not need to separately open different social networks such as Yelp and Trip Advisors to look for reviews. It saved their time. From the perspective of tourists, clients shared their consumer experiences which would facilitate the decision-making process of other customers. 

After reviewing the prototype of showing total prices for selected dishes that includes local prices and US dollars, and phrases used in ordering the dishes, including how to pronounce by using local language, interviewees thought they were pretty useful. And most of them wanted to ordered food by using local language because it was also a learning process for local food and food culture to the interviewees. Few of them wanted to know extra phrases, like how to say delicious in local language. Because they wanted to praise if the ordered food was really great. Some interviewees said if they could not pronounce the local language clearly, they would like to directly show what they have chosen on the mobile phone to the waitress. They suggested to show how much to tip in the foreign country. Therefore, they could better control budget.

However, it was debatable whether it was a good idea to use a food game for helping travelers learn authentic local food and local food culture. Because most travelers stated that they did not want to play a game even when they were waiting for food. Some of them thought if they were kids, they would be more likely to play a food game.  Some interviewees said they preferred to directly read some paragraph about food and culture introduction. Because the paragraph was straightforward. Therefore, I redesigned the experience about how to make travelers easily discover authentic local food, best restaurants where they eat that food and related food culture.

With the use of a user-agreement questionnaire, I also found that designs could help travelers effectively and efficiently make better choices about a restaurant and food while traveling abroad and augment their overall food experiences.

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Images Cluster Critique

I did images cluster critique with Weiting. He gave me feedback to help me think and explore. Such as what stories will tourists want to learn? When will people want to learn stories? Showing related films, books, or music related to a tourist spot might be interesting. It is another way to think the relationship between movies, books, and tourist spots. Currently, some people want to travel a special place because movies or books mention that. They are interested in learning that place. So they do a trip.

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First Round User Interviews

I did six user interviews to learn people’s travel experience, but they are not strangers. Since it is more comfortable for me to learn and explore the possible room for a trip topic.

I summarize some general feedback after talking with people. •    Most people want to know if a tourist spot is special, different and might bring them unique experience before arriving at there. •    Most people view photos, videos, descriptions online to learn a tourist spot during planning. Photos and videos are straightforward ways to get information and learn a new place. Some of them review comments from other tourists. •    It is time-consuming to do research about interested tourist spots. Google search is a common way to get information. But, it also brings too many results and information for distilling. It is hard to find out what is a good piece of information. •    Some people do search for learning more information about an interesting place after a trip. •    At a new tourist spot, people use a mobile phone for learning information based on their interest or want to know where to go. But they don’t want to spend much time on the mobile phone itself since they want to experience scenes.  •    Sometimes, people do a plan that is not pretty precisely. They just walk and see if there is something they are interested in when they are at a new tourist spot.

I am a little surprised by local food making a great impact on people.  One of the reasons for traveling is because people like food. They think good food not only means delicious but also is a good way to learn local culture.  

Influence from friends who have been a tourist spot before is great to people’s trip plan. If they think recommendations from their friends is interesting, they will do more research on that place. Like googling photos, videos or description.

People think storytelling by local people is a good idea. Local people are similar to friends’ recommendations. Some people want to learn stories from local people before a trip. Because it will be helpful for them to know if they are interested in these tourist spots. Some people want to listen to stories when they are at that tourist spot. It will be easy for them to learn places while walking. Some people mentioned that if it is possible to have a chance to interact with local people.e.g. had a conversation with a local people.

Viewing photos about an evolution of a tourist spot could be interesting.

Some people like knowing which films or books talked about a tourist spot. Some of them, because they read or watch a tourist spot described by movies or books, they want to go there. Sometimes, after they visit an interesting tourist place, they want to know if there is any movie or book talking about that place. Or if there is any interested story describe it.    

Further thinking

I am interested in further exploring some possible new topics. Currently, sometimes tourists spend time on manually doing google search for information to learn about a tourist spot. So what if there is an easy and effective way to help people learn a tourist spot? what if key information about that tourist spot will auto display for the tourists based on the current location rather than depending on an Internet search? The information might be short stories told by local people, photos of the evolution of a tourist spot, related films, books, and music mentioned that place. Is there any other information people want to learn from their mobile phone based on a context of location?

For storytelling part, •    What format of a story will be and when a story will be told? •    Which topics will tourists be interested to learn from local people? •    Who will be good people to tell a story?  Like local elderly people who have lived in there for a long time? Another topic might be how to bring digital world to real resturants to help tourists find interested food in a new city. 

I also will do more research about marketing products.

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1999 (AD) Future Predictions

1999 (AD) Future Predictions is an interesting film that talks about imaginations of the future of 1999. Compare the future of 1999 in the film and 2017,  I found some of the concepts have been done or being developed. Some of them are still tricky issues to us.

Prediction:  A centralized home computer

In the film, Mike’s central home computer is secretary librarian, banker, teacher, medical technician, bridge partner and all-around servant. Besides that, all pertinent information about this family, their records, tastes and reference materials are stored on this computer that is available instantly to every member of the family. 2017: The overall concept is similar to a current digital assistant, such as Google Assistant used in Google Home or Alexa. These companies are trying to build a centralized platform connecting different services. The centralized platform well stores all data about a user, and instantly provides all relevant services when he/she needs. But the personal data is stored on Cloud.

Prediction: An education center for students to learn at home rather than schools

There is an education center in James’s home for him to study. Assignments are programmed and teaching machine helps him learn lessons. The computer tells him how many wrongs he has made and which lecture he can refer.

2017: Now we have interactive online education systems, like Khan Academy that provides free education for anyone anywhere. This company hosts thousands of free online tutorial videos for a wide variety of subjects. An adaptive testing system also allows learners to practice at their own pace, while a status-tracking and badge system provides helpful metrics as well as a gamified element to learning.

Prediction: Multiple people can chat via real-time video conference

At home, Karenann opens computer to view and chat with her son and husband at the same time.

2017: Nowadays, we have Google Hangouts, Skype, and so on to chat online with more than one person at the same time. Besides audio chat, we also can view each other.

Prediction: Personalized menu and automatically recommending alternatives based on total calories of menu used for a family

Karenann can review each person's menu in her family and get suggestions if the total calories from the menu have exceeded a certain amount of quantity.

2017: There are a bunch of food apps to help people choose menus but I am not sure if there is an app that can tell people if the total calories are too high for a family. Because it also depends on what types of foods and how much of the foods people eat.

Prediction:  Machines help auto monitor food inventory, suggest menus and cook food

Most foods are stored frozen. The computer will keep a running inventory on all foods and suggest daily menus based on the nutritional needs of the family. When the meal has been selected, the various portions of the foods are fed automatically into the microwave oven for cooking or warming.

2017: The concept is similar to Internet of Objects. Our refrigerators with cameras monitor how many foods left and suggest a shopping list. But I don’t think microwave oven will auto open and begin to cook based on menu’s selection.  We can set the time such as when to cook by using a microwave, but we still need to put the food into a microwave or oven by ourselves.

Prediction: A centralized atmospheric monitoring system for controlling temperatures, humidity, bacteria, pollen and dust

The house has a central atmospheric system. It maintains constant year-around temperatures and control humidity, bacteria, pollen, and dust.

2017: It is central air-conditioning. Every room has an air-conditioning. People can monitor temperature, humidity by a control panel. But we still need to put some chemicals to clean bacteria in an atmosphere. And air cleaners are used for getting rid of pollen and dust.

Prediction: Auto cleaning closets

Clothing is stored in cleaning closets where there are a chemical vapor atmosphere and an ultrasonic vibrator used for removing dirt particles.

2017: It is a pretty fancy idea. Now some washing machines have a capability to get rid of bacteria and drying clothing by ultraviolet rays. But I have not seen a cleaning closet which is able to do that. Will it be dangerous for people if a closet always has a chemical vapor atmosphere inside?

Prediction: Do shopping at home rather physical stores

Fingertip shopping is available for many homemakers. The console will be channeled into the store. A camera can scan a display of wares which Karenann selects by a push button.

2017:  The concept is similar to online shopping. Before we order an item on the internet, we can know what it looks like through photos or videos, and if the item is in stock.  But a camera has not been used for scanning. Since all items are virtual on the internet.

Prediction:  A monitor auto monitors all circuits and reports to service agency if there is an issue.

A monitor checks all circuits every two seconds. It inserts a backup circuit when trouble develops and alerts the communal service agency for the replacement.

2017: There are some ways to monitor circuits in local electricity authority. But the concept about that all issues can be auto-identified by machines and auto be reported to a related service agency is still being developed.

Prediction: Auto producing various food specials in oceans and a well-balanced ocean ecosystem.

It will be as wide as the ocean which fired not the only recreation for the adventures but an increasing variety of Hydra cultured exotic fresh food stops.

2017:  Many our oceans are being polluted by garbage, industrial pollution and so on. And many marine animals are decreasing or disappearing. A lot of seafood have to be raised by humans.

Prediction: A smart medical couch knows everything about a person’s health and makes smart suggestions

Mike lies on a medical couch for 15 seconds. Therefore, his weight, temperature, pulse, respiration, blood pressure and electrocardiogram are routinely recorded. At the same time, his body is scanned. The computer calculates the amount of exercise that is necessary to balance Mike’s food intake and maintain proper muscle tone.

2017:  This concept is being developed. It's like Internet of smart objects to help monitor human’s health and make reasonable suggestions if the people are identified any issues related to their health.

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Exploration

Obviously, AR and IoT are technology trends. I did research for them during summer break. But can the advanced technology better serve human? I am interested in how to use proper technology to solve right problems.

“If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Albert Einstein said. Indeed, when developing new products, processes, or even businesses, many companies or designers aren’t sufficiently in defining the problems they’re attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important.

Problems and related topics in the following fields I pay attention to now but not limit.

Eldly People

How might I help senior citizen who are living alone at home take healthy behavior?

Most eldly people live alone. A lot of them stare at TV or play mobile device for a pretty long time in day, and always stay at home. It is easy for them to forget social connection and family connection. Circle of life is getting smaller and smaller.

So how to encourage them to connect with others, like their friends? how to encourage them to make new friends? how to encourage them walk outside for a period of time in a day? And how to encourage them build more intimate connection with their families? 

Tourism

How might I help tourists better learn scenic spots and related cultrual heritage and make them have an immersive experience?

When taking a trip to a new place, most people are full of curious. I often have a lot questions about a historical scenic spot or a cultural-heritage site. Such as: When did it built? What did it look like one hundred years or fifty years ago? What has happened in here? What was story? Is there any unique character about it? Are there any movies, books or comments talking about or related to the scenic sport? What did the movies or book say?  What is archaeological information about it?

The problem is that it is time-consuming for most people to get an overall picture. They have to do research by Google search in order to gain knowledge about spots, the information is separated on websites. They spend time in learning information in advance. But they don’ easily know hidden stores. Sometimes, when they stand in front of current scenic spots, it is not easy for them to map images of history to the current appearance. 

 How might I help people quickly make travel plan?

Making a travel plan is time-consuming. We often do a lot of preparation before arriving at a destination. For example, when making a travel plan to New York City by self, most people do such research and study. What best New York tourist attractions are?  What scenic spots will they decide to visit? How about the price of airplane ticket? And when will fly from and fly to?

Which hotel should they book?  What is the price for a night? Are there any good local restaurants nearby? How to make a reasonable schedule for visiting? Which public transportation can they take? What are the schedule for the public transportation? Where to eat?

How might I help people discover hidden gems and stories in New York City?

When we're living in a city whose history dates back to the 1600s, every day is an opportunity to discover another mind-blowing piece of historical trivia. For example, abandoned city hall subway station in downtown Manhattan. Chinatown's Doyers Street Tunnel that was used to be an escape route for people fleeing the gangs that populated the area in the 1800s.

Disability

How might I help low vision and blind people socialize?

Last year, one of my projects was about people who are low vision or blind people. I interviewed some teenagers in Vision building and found that they were eager to make friends and socialize with other people. That’s why they asked their family members to assist them to go to Vision building, which is a community for them to talk with others. The physical community is good. But it’s not convenient for low vision and blind people to get there as long as they want to go. They need to depend on others’ help to take them to there. So is there any alternative to help low vision or blind people connect with others more easily and enjoyable?

Museums

How might I help visitors explore treasure from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and have a more immersive experience?

Book Stores

How might I help people get more immersive experience when in physical book stores?

Online Shopping

How might I help people augment online shopping experience?

Addiction of Mobile Phones

Problems: people stare at their mobile devices when in a meeting, play apps on their mobile devices at a dinner table or texting when walking. It is unfriendly to colleagues and friends, and even put them in the danger.