Designing With Web - Part 3: week 1

Improve moving out experience for students thanks to social networks

Group 2

Gwenaël: Mindmeister link
Alizée: Mindmeister link
Joffrey: Mindmeister link
Haipei: worked on another subject :(

Project 1: BONDS

Context

where: local city
who: students

Many things can push a student to move to a new city. But whether you are a freshman or a senior, one of the main concern when moving in a new city is to discover the places of interest as well as meeting new people. The idea is to create a social network where students who wants to show their city could connect with the newcomers.

Target

Senior students who are willing to show the city
Students who are new to the local community

We are targeting two types of student. First, we need a database of 'ambassadors' who are students who know the area and the city pretty well. Then, they will be able to offer their services to the 'newcomers'. They also are students who are just arriving in a new city and who are looking for advices and points of interest.

Service offered

what? how?

When they subscribe, the 'ambassadors' are asked for three things: their school, their interests and their availabilities. In that way the service will firstly be able to tell how many 'ambassadors' of your school are present in a specific city. The 'newcomers' will be able to navigate and sort experiences by interests (architecture, restaurants, nature etc...).

The process:

Step 1: Sign up into the mobile app and provide basic infos: Name, Age, Location, School, Interests, Small Bio
Step 2: Look for an experience into the catalogue and filter them by interests and location
Step 3: Your turn to show the city by sharing your availabilities and a small description of your tour in a new 'experience card'

Identity

describe the universe around your service by creating a mood board and name your service accordingly

Benchmark

List concurrents / relative projects and describe how they relate/differentiate to your project

Airbnb experience, a service proposed by airbnb that helps you to meet local people and do cultural activities together in a specific city.
On va sortir, a website where people can offer free or chargeable activities to go out and meet new people.
Kijiji, a platform offering various peer to peer deals including services to connect people.
Couchsurfing, a platform where people offer a place to stay for free. It allows exchanges of local tips.
Meetup, a webiste allows to join events with locals by meeting a group.

References

books/films/articles/...

The Before Trilogy is a serie of films by Richard Linklater. They were shot at nine-years interval and they basicaly relate the romance between a men and a women walking in a big city, one for each movie.
They discovered eachother while they where exploring the cities. It shows how powerful the connection with someone can be when you experiment together.
'I follow a different person every day': using strangers to explore the city. This article from the Guardian shows how interesting it can be to follow local strangers to discover some unusual places in the city.
The narrator counts how he followed some strangers and gives advices about it.
Un entretien avec le Français qui a visité tous les pays du monde, the story of a French man who went everywhere in the world and explains how important meeting local people was.
...

Project 2: Roomiz

Context

when? where? who? why?

Moving out also means moving in and thus finding a new place. Specialized websites exist but there are also lots of people looking for new roomates or an appartment on social media. Those ads are often public and are posted on Facebook groups dedicated to tips in a certain area. The idea is to gather and classify all those ads to make them easily accessible by the newcomers looking for a place to live.
Our goal is to create a website that would gather all the facebook announces that answer certain criteria. Using a Facebook API, the user will be able to fill criteria like price, size in m2, or number of roomates. Afterwards he can also filter more the posts. The announces will appear by date of publication. There will be 3 possibilities:

Someone who's looking for an appartment
for a room
or for a roomate

The criteria will be adapted according to the search.

Target

for whom?

We are targeting students and people looking for a room in a shared house or an appartment.

Service offered

what? how?

The service is gathering information on Facebook through its API and selected key words. The announces thus found are presented within a selected area chosen by the user with a map for the appartments and rooms. In that way the student looking for shared places has instantly access to public ads posted by people already living in the city and looking for roommates or appartments. The idea is to gather and classify all those ads to make them easily accessible by the newcomers looking for a place to live.
Our goal is to create a website that would gather all the facebook announces that answer certain criteria. Using a Facebook API, the user will be able to fill criteria like price, size in m2, or number of roomates. Afterwards he can also filter more the posts. The announce will appear by date of publication. There will be 3 possibilities:

Someone who's looking for an appartment
for a room
or for a roomate

The criteria will be adapted according to the search.

Identity

describe the universe around your service by creating a mood board and name your service accordingly

Benchmark

List concurrents / relative projects and describe how they relate/differentiate to your project

Le Bon Coin, a website where people can put ads of whatever product they want to sell! You can look for a shared house as well.
Roomlala, a website where you can find appartments, rooms and homestay.
La Carte des Colocs, a website exclusively dedicated to flatsharing.
Bien Ici.
Louer Agile.

References

books/films/articles/...

The Roommate is a film about 2 girls discover their roomate after being enrolled at uni. But at some point one of them is getting crazy.
The beginning of the story shows how important a roomate is in the firsts steps of discovering a city.
10 Benefits Of Having A Roommate, article explaining the advantages of having roommates and how it can help you on a social as well as on a financial perspective.
...