Temptation were extremely pleased to win the prize for Best Postgraduate Stall at the Young Enterprise-sponsored Trade Fair at Kingston University in December!
As well as winning a lovely certificate and a cash prize, we sold goodie-bags containing cupcakes, postcards and Christmas loveliness to members of the public, which means we are making a profit for the first time since our business was set up!
Check out Corrine’s video of the evening below…
Over Christmas we’ve been mainly working on content and design for the magazine, in order to launch the first online edition of the magazine before the end of January. Watch this space!
In our meeting today, we laid all our cards on the table and made a comprehensive list of all the tasks he have finished, just started, and not even thought about yet! Working around our schedules, and when team members are available over the Christmas period, we were able to create a rough timeline for the progress of the business over the next few weeks…
As our timeline shows, our focus for the next few weeks is based around preparing the first (prototype) issue so that we can begin to distribute it/publish it online before the University Christmas vacation begins. When this happens, the magazine will take on various forms…
- CD Package (see the research and development page for a prototype video). This version of the magazine will be in a fairly small print run (although we are unsure of the exact numbers, as we are still waiting for a quote from Stardiscs, our potential supplier). We will ideally have between 50-100 copies of this physical version of the magazine, which we can hand out to potential advertisers/sponsors/distributors. We can also use this version as a form of market research, showing it to members of our target audience in order to gauge the reaction of a physical vs. electronic product.
- ISSUU.com through a link attached to our website, the viewer would be taken to issuu.com, an online publishing platform which would enable us to display pdf versions of the magazine pages.
- Business Cards by distributing business cards (free from vistaprint.com, already designed and ordered, see below) we hope to spread the brand name and image amongst out target audience, and again, have a tangible product which we can physically hand to the consumer.
As usual, please check our ‘Video Diary‘ page for the latest instalment from this week’s group meeting!
Check out our new video diary (on the video diaries page, surprise!), and a new video showing a prototype for the new magazine format on the ‘Research and Development’ page. Enjoy!
Last week, the Temptation Team had the opportunity to show the rest of the group what we’re made of… a video which didn’t work very well. But in all seriousness, it was brilliant to have a platform to show the work we’ve been doing so far, and also to get some much needed feedback from Corrine and the rest of the class.
It was quite a tricky session, as it seemed as though our group (we were second from last) didn’t get as much time as the others for feedback from the class. However, after a bit of an appeal for comments from fellow MACErs on Facebook and Twitter dealt us a multitude of responses. Main points seemed to focus on the development of an online/electronic product (which we are in the process of developing now – oh so ridiculously excited!) We have various ideas on the go at the moment, ranging from a purely online magazine in website format, advertised online or by business-card style handouts, to a pdf magazine (looking at platforms such as issuu.com) available to download from a website, or distributed on a CD (in some pretty nifty wallets, including 8 pages which could act as a mini-magazine, hello tiny tear-out recipes!)
With this approach to the presentation of the ‘magazine’, we are not only producing a product which is far more interesting and innovative than other potential competitors, but it also leaves us open to be alot more creative with the design and presentation of the finished product.
We’re in the process of getting quotes from stardiscs.co.uk, who look like a perfect supplier if that is the road we choose to go down, and we’ve registered the domain name temptationmagazine.co.uk – website coming soon! With all of these options, we address the issues raised in the feedback from our presentations, the fact that we DO need to move into the 20th Century and go with the flow when it comes to doing things electronically, and not jump the gun. Producing a prototype magazine as a first issues is by far the most cost-effective way of testing our business strategy, and will also provide us with a physical product to show potential advertisers (and hopefully raise our profits!)
In our group meeting, we discussed the possibility that we may have set off a bit hard, a bit soon, and not given ourselves much room for compromise away from our initial ideas. We have now realised that the whole ‘fail early and fail often’ idea is not necessarily true of our team, but we are now aware that our earlier organisation may have actually been hindering us a tad. However, we feel that we are now definitely back on track with a far more feasible, exciting and innovative potential product.
F.Y.I – this is the song we have been listening to this week in order to get ourselves back on track. Enjoy.
This week, we produced a 5-minute video, highlighting elements of the magazine which we have been focusing on so far. (naturally, this involved the trusty video camera, armfuls of props, a couple of hours locked in a group-study room in the library, and lots of general silliness.)
ENJOY! (and don’t blame us if you feel a bit hungry after watching.)
In class this week (in full fancy dress – Temptation Magazine loves Halloween!), we played around with the various types of prototyping. Asked to prototype a new system for elevator door buttons, we were given post-it notes, and a few minutes to try and spell out our ideas. Armed with our video camera (of course!) we produced this little vid to show our idea…
While working on our prototype, we went through various stages of communication, being allowed to speak, but with our eyes shut, being able to see, but not speak, and attempting to communicate our ideas through drawing and doing. We often use this type of paper-prototyping in our group meetings, it allows us all to be involved equally, and to demonstrate our ideas (no matter how crazy) in a fast and effective manner. By acting out our prototype (with the aid of some gloved-mime hands!), we were able to see the advantages and disadvantages to our ideas, in a similar way to the prototyping we undertook in our group meeting a few weeks ago (see video below).
Experimenting with these different methods of prototyping is going to be very important for our group. Since we are creating a product which is generally fairly self-contained within a traditional format, if we are to create a product which is truly innovative and interesting, we must use these methods to their full potential.
This week, we designed 3 personas, (highly stereotyped and very extreme) examples of the kind of people we are targeting within the student population.
We came up with these characters after several weeks of market research, conducting surveys and online tests, but most importantly, actually going out and speaking to people.
Enjoy!
Below are short descriptions of each persona, some of which is brainstorming from a sort of word association game we used in order to build up each character as fully as possible.
Persona Number One: The International Student
Bing is a 21 year old international student.
(lost… clueless!)
“Hi! I LOVE London!”
Bing lives in the halls of residence… He needs direction and help on where to go, where to shop, and what to cook!” He studies a lot, and takes his classes seriously. He wants help on where to find ingredients, stores with reasonable prices, and easy-to-make recipes that don’t take too much of his time!” He is still very new to the English culture. “What the hell is custard?!”
Traits:
21 - living in halls - clueless - studying all the time - buying things that are more expensive than they should be - buy ingredients from china town - cooking for other Chinese students - he’s not very social - very touristy and likes to go to central London - struggling with language – struggling in stories because of the language barrier - he doesn’t understand the English culture and food - struggling with the routine of things - polite and shy so sometimes afraid to ask and inquire.
Persona Number Two – The Girl About Town
This is Megan. Megan is a 21 year old English Raa. She’s a blonde. (dyed… expensively!)
“Call me Megs!” She wears Uggs.
Megan has a boyfriend, and loves to hang out with him and her girls for cocktails at fancy bars and restaurants. She doesn’t care about cheap eats or take out junk food, she would rather make salads and light sandwiches at home. She knows of all the hot happenings in town… “OMG! I am the centre of the party!”
Traits:
She’s 21 - She’s a blonde - She has a boyfriend - Pashmina - She’s an English Raa - She doesn’t care about cheap eats or junk food - She eats out - Drinks a lot of cocktails and white wine - She play hockey or lacross - She’s doing art history - She would cook but wouldn’t get dirty - She’s got daddy’s money – she’s daddy’s little girl - She goes to chain Italian restaurants - Likes to go to central London - Definitely a waitrose shopper - She knows where all hot happenings are - Bars and clubs rather than pubs.
Persona Number Three: The Disaster Student
This is Johnny. Johnny is an 18 year old local student.
(just moved out of the house… Party ON!)
He probably spent most his money on a brand new play station, hip new clothes, and whatever’s left of it will be spent on Carlsberg beers at the student union pub! Johnny is a bit of a mommy’s boy, not the most dedicated student, and can’t be bothered with cooking healthy foods or things that take too much time to be done! He eats loads of pizza, has peanut butter and jelly for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and he lives in halls! “My microwave is my kitchen!”
Traits:
Hip hop wannabe - He spends most of his money on stupid things - A bit of a stoner - Mommy’s boy - Not the most dedicated student - Slacker - His favourite food is pizza - Big take out fan - He would do anything to impress girls - Quite vain - Living in halls - He loves his play station - He’s not health conscious - He plays football – goes to the gym - lives in the student union bar – living on microwavable meals.
a short video showing the various ways in which we prototype…
It is relatively difficult to prototype different shapes and sizes of magazines so instead we were looking more at the actual content, the launch and the way that it is being marketed. We guess it could be called a prototyping of ideas which will manifest itself in the written word when the project comes to completion. As a result much of our film is based around the thought processes that went into the first month’s work. It was also a good chance to look back over what we had already acheived and what we hoped the project would acheive. We were also able to look at the way that the magazine would be launched and how it would be distributed. A role play on the different ways that a magazine can be handed out demonstrated the way that distribution can influence a consumers initial reaction to the product. Being informative and polite instead of pushy can help us to build up a relationship with our readers and it also acts as good marketing. For the launch we looked at the idea of wraping each individual magazine in the style of a Christmas present. Although time consuming and potentially expensive it is a good way to differentiate our product on a visual level.
The difficulties which we faced in prototyping mainly concerned not being able to portray the magazine as a tangible object. We overcame this by creating a virtual prototype to include cover ideas, names, flat plan and content.
a short video showing our brainstorming of emotional, cognitive and physical aspects which may impact on our design process…
Through our research we have discovered a need within our audience for people to be entertained, food brings people together, it is something which everyone has in common. People globally can relate to the subject, and it provides comfort, and familiarity. For the cognitive aspect, we tried to address the way that we think about magazines. We first thought about this as what are its physical properties and what we can do with a magazine apart from its primary function. Realistically not a huge amount. This got us to thinking about the different way that a magazine can be constructed in order to provoke different thoughts and reactions. The actual shape of the magazine could be changed so for example a magazine shaped like a burger/steak/orange would automatically signal to the reader that it was a food magazine. Likewise different textures to the paper might make us react differently to the actual content of the magazine as we read.
