When we're planning any project, it's essential to think about where people will want to use/interact with it to maximise their fun. So when would be a great time for me to say to myself, "I'd love to do a trail now"

Some thoughts,

"I've just finished on a phone call on my iPhone and wonder if there's anything fun close by?"

"I'm doing a usual trip to xyz and wouldn't mind doing something fun on the way."

"I'm out wandering in town and bored."

"I've just left work and want a more exciting route to walk home."

"I'm in the middle of somewhere new/rubbish/exciting and want to explore!"

"My kids love Harry Potter, is there something that they can do around the town?" (P.S I don't have kids.. just thinking outside the young male box)

Are we appealing to the casual gamer, or are people going to be turned into avid trailers?

It's like the LOL cats podcast recorded by Sam Downie. The CEO knows people love LOL cats, however he knows they don't want to look at LOL cats all day. So they create tools and layouts geared to let a casual user see lots of LOLCATs and interact with them over a few minutes. Tools that allow you to embed, create, rate share all within the space of 1... 2 clicks.

I can haz cheezer burger

ichc Rating

We know people enjoyed the Happy Packages experience (bluetooth/sms/trails) but also know their time for interacting with the experience is very short and if you're lucky, somone's lunch break! So it'd be good to provide the user with simple tools for experiencing, enjoying, finding and creating trails that only require a few minutes of their time. Maybe our perfect user is a casual user too?

Now the LOLCATZ's casual user model works in the purely digital world, but what about digital mixed with the real outside world. The idea of distracting people for 2 minutes is a bit of an online art practiced by Facebook and Youtube and works wonders when you're at the desk in the warm chair at the office. Not while you're out doing something, wandering somewhere, late for work in your car or fed up with the cold wet weather...

The questions

So what's our model for distracting people to have fun for a few minutes, based on the outside world?

What tools will help promote the use the the fun trails and get people wanting to open our app more often?

Where would you want to play with a trail?

 

 

Posted by dancourse