Beginnings to my idea....
So these are a couple things that came to mind after last night:
- One thing I thought of was definitely based off the Locker Stalker or Stocker or whatever we're calling it these days ... but what's important is there would actually be an actual, all out, middle school locker. Perhaps is something you would add on to an exisiting site (and for this, I'm not just talking about social networking in terms of Facebook/MySpace ... something that could go on the plethora of sites we came up with that already have the attention of these girls. For one, we know messaging is a big thing (who doesn't get excited when they have a Facebook message?). Through this, however, I was imagining the messages would be inside the locker, almost like on Post Its (or a similar paper product idea), written in handwriting -- the whole idea that someone left you a "real" note in your locker. Although this is more the social side of things, I'm sure there are ways we could turn it to incorporate news. There would also be a photo aspect that would work in 2 ways: 1. personal pictures of all your little pink shirt, mini skirt wearing middle school girl friends and 2. for news events ... the whole idea of a picture speaking a thousand words. Dave mentioned the idea of pictures telling stories when were first broke into this group in Ithaca (I remember mentioning the similarities to MSNBC's Week in Pictures). So there could be captions ... or even VIDEO in your locker. The real catch here is the news through text though. In this version of Locker Stalker it would be newspaper clippings in your lockers that would be actual news stories ... maybe with a little animation so they would actually float around your locker and pop up once it's opened (ok I'm thinking way down the road on that one). These would be news stories that would not only affect this demographic, but maybe written in a way to convey a "regular" hard news story, but with details to this level. Koz also originally mentioned the idea of having stories about your friends in the orginal idea, too.
I'm not entirely sold on what I've come up with so far, and my details may not be the best, but it's the idea that I like. I firmly believe they need to be getting this news without it being forced upon them, or without them really realizing it. So if we could come up with a way (better than this) to mix their socializing needs (which we've found out are their prized posession) with their news needs (which they don't realize they have) it'll be the perfect combination.
- The second idea I had involved incentives ... and I'm not really sure what they would be. Anyway, it would be a pop up news quiz (again, hard news, current events, etc) that would be an add-on to their exisiting sites (same feeling as above). Depending on how many questions they got right, what they scored, etc... they would receive an incentive. Kind of like if this was being done in SecondLife, you would receive Linden dollars (I think that's what they were called). Although sites aimed at this age group don't necessarily include things they have to "purchase" to make their sites cooler, maybe it could even be paired with a sponsor. Or work on a points system. The idea behind this is they want to be attentive to the news so they can score well on the news quiz so they can get someting "new and cool," be it for their site or not. This goes with the idea we discussed last night about "sparking interest" which I think, combined with establishing habit, are the two keys to engaging this demographic.
The other thing that was mentioned last night, which I haven't really developed anything off of, was the idea of pairing kids with already-popular adult media forms (the idea of Time Magazine and Time for kids). I was trying to thing of popular "adult news sites" that would could possibly add the game feature, or idea of interactivity to?
Anway, the top two are my ideas in a very rough form that I'll continue to flush out this week, but wanted to get them out because they might spark something with someone else working with this demographic.
4 comments:
Andrea:
Love the first idea. We could combine a lot of ideas from our two sites to develop the greatest site of all time. How, besides the notes (which is way sweet) could we get kids to want to go on it? I'm having the hardest time figuring that out myself.
Okay for some reason it won't let be edit my idea right now ... but I just had a thought. What if somehow we included a "school newspaper" in the locker ... but it had elements of what a middle school paper would have (i dunno, horoscopes, gossip columns, you get the idea). But there's like blank spots in it (a template ... think InDesign) and then you have a selection of stories that you can drag and drop in to complete your newspapers. But those are actual "news" stories. So you end up with a combination of hard news and girl news.
Again, you run into the whole problem of why do they want to complete the newspaper / who says they're going to read it anyway. We have to trick them into it, somehow.
I really like the direction that you're going in with the middle school demo research. I was thinking about that book Branded that we had to read for VisComm and the ideas from the book are reflected in your approach to this project.
I like the concept behind the drag n' drop that the girls can do within their personal lockers - their news, their way. Using the ideas behind Branded, we can easily convince this demo to complete their newspapers - maybe offer incentives if they do - more access, etc.
love the idea of a locker app on facebook, and maybe we could literally just get it sponsored by the partner from ONA.
It kind of goes off of Kim's idea of having something easy and fun like the Washinton Post did. Just make it an app and people can add and take away from their locker and maybe like a little secret wall that only they can read or something.
I mean, I doubt it would get the high traffic that some of the older apps do, but it seems really cool.
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