This week we took a step back from developing our idea to add some meaning and context behind it. We were intending to move forward with the development of the idea and start breaking it down into the separate deliverables that we are lookign at having. However, before we could get into that Josh suggested we use a UX design process and start looking at our target audience and who they are before deciding on what we will actually make. Although it is not worlds apart from what we are doing, we thought it would be an interesting angle to approach this with a UX mindset (and Josh and I actually spoke about how you could change a traditional project by approaching it with a different mindset, which is essentially what creative technologies is right?). This whole process can be found on the Profiling page.

We started by breaking down our target audience into two different groups: Non-donors and Infrequent Donors. As discussed earlier we are also targeting people who have donated before but maybe not recently or they do it very sporadically because to cut it right down, NZ Blood needs everyone it can get really. By breaking down the two personas (Liam and I, but the things listed are not solely based of the two of us) we get a better understanding of the target audience's behaviours and living situations so we can better target them in terms of media, timing, and also execution of the message. We also are able to bring down their reasons for not donating, or challenges into 4 distinct "pain points". In a typical UX project these pain points would then be addressed and the product would try and solve these. Our project differs as it is in essence a marketing project, and so the pain points translate into excuses people use for not donating, so by creating these "Customer Profiles" we are able to identify the core of and justify our angle of attack on this project. Since we have gone on and come up with how we thing the campaign would run, we have also created a journey map for someone who interacts with it that highlights the transmedia nature of this campaign as well as showing how the actual human interactions are a key part of it

You can read this all in the other documents but essentially we are looking at running 3 stages of this campaign. This first is print media and at this stage we have thought it could consist of Billstickers at locations such as the Symonds St bus stop outside the universities (very large concentration of 18-25 year olds there on a daily basis), full page ads in student magazines or any magazines that are popular with the youth, and even stickers that could be placed around anywhere for people to get intrigued about. The idea is that all of the print media is cohesive and looks like it belongs together so that people understand that its all related but as they are all a little bit elusive and don't really explain what they are about and all simply point towards a central website the audience becomes intrigued and visits it.

The second stage is the website. The site will act as our contextual and conceptual statements for the public, it will hold all the information that makes the campaign relevant (like the Swim Reaper's one does). At the same time it will hold and interactive element which is where the audience actually has the first mention of blood donation. The idea is that this is where the absurd situations come from. The user will enter a situation that they want an excuse for and it will always return something along the lines of, "Your excuse is: 'But I donated blood, so it's ok'". The absurdity of the situation will come from both the user and also a randomness aspect that we will program into the site. At this stage we are saying that the user will be able to enter a verb and then pick if the sentence includes either a location or a person but they will not be able to say what either is. The program will then generate them a sentence which describes their situation to which the afore mentioned excuse will be presented. The idea is that the situation is so ridiculous that people will either tell their friends to try it or they will even have the option to share their situation to social media thereby enticing other people to try it. This all equates to more people being reached and thus more peopel thinking about blood donation.

The third stage is social media. Outside of uni I work in marketing for a Manuka Honey company and the thing I have learned over the time I have been there is that in this day in age, if you want any hope in reaching people, you need to be active on social media. Not only is it a cheap (and sometimes free) way of reaching your target audience because most of them are also on it, but it is often used as validation. People will go and check out your socials after they hear about you to see what you do and see if you are legit and if they want to buy into you. The social media will essentially be run like the print stage so as to point people back to the website but as an addition it will also have a selection of the user generated situations too.

This week we also had our first crit which went very well for us. Everyone seemed to grasp our project quite quickly and they could understand the context behind and even the concept, to the point that both Laurent and Donna mentioned it in the right context, when someone's presentation wasn't working there was a comment of "Oh but you gave blood so we will forgive you." This is really great for us because it not only validates the project and lets us know that we have a clear idea that people can understand but also that the concept of our idea is catchy and at first glance seems to work because people find it funny o use it in any situation which achieves our purpose of trying to bring it into everyday conversation and get people talking about it.