Here’s the results from the latest weekly poll at CommunityOfSweden.com
Archive for the 'Meetings' Category
Here’s something to keep you occupied while waiting for CommunityOfSweden.com to open it’s doors!
The film Open Skies, Open Minds is a four minute long journey that takes you from north to south and gives you a glimpse of contemporary life in Sweden.
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MeetingsLast week was the week of the wireframes, literally.
Me and Hans from Trive worked hard on getting the community wireframes as finished as possible before he would leave for his summer vacation. It was essential for the project to make the best of the time we had so there were a couple of late working nights and many long meetings last week.
All is well that ends well they say and it’s true also in this case. We were almost done with the wireframes when the friday came. We got to celebrate with some gourmet food and drink (read: pizza and sweet cider…).
I’m very happy with the work we did last week. Hans did a great job!
Since then I’ve done the finishing touches and the wireframes are now finished - as finished as a working document can ever be, that is. I’ve done two presentations with the wireframes in house, both very successful. It’s great to see and hear how others now can visualize what I’ve had in my head for so long.
I will explain more about wireframes and how we’ve used them in a future post soon. For now I’ll leave you with this photo taken last monday during a brainstorming session that laid the groundwork for the wireframe.
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Design Meetings Online Community Tech web 2.0Do you remember the previous post about personas? If not, read it here:
Creating Personas - the representation of an audience
Our online community personas have been ready for a while and I’ve finally translated them into english so they can be published here and shown to the whole wide world!
Well to you wonderful readers anyway 
So if you’re curious, do take a look at the personas below and please answer the poll at the bottom of the post:
Are you one of our personas?
I don’t expect our descriptions to be spot on but if you feel you can relate to one of them it would be great to know. Also if you absolutely can’t relate to any of them say so. That’s also valuable information and if you comment and tell us more we might be able to adjust these personas accordingly. Thanks!
Evelin Jansen
(photo: Fredrik Schlyter / Naturbild)
35 years old from Holland. Lives in the calm suburb of Muziekwijk outside of Almere. She’s got two kids - a boy and a girl 9 and 12 years old. Often goes on holidays by car in Europe.
Also goes on charters now and then. Works as a lawyer.
Likes mobility and drives a Volvo XC90. Enjoys outdoor activities and vacations with hiking, bicycling or swimming.
Not much for the big city life.
Has been in Sweden before. Would like to visit an old colleague in Sweden.
Finds Sweden very exotic.
Higher goals with the visit to the online community:
- To plan a holiday that will be a good story to tell
- To find the hidden good spots to get to by car
- To find alternatives to the classic holiday route in Sweden
- To choose what part in Sweden to go to
- To create and plan the perfect holiday route
- To find stuff to do for the children
User role: consumer
Loyalty: visits on and off
Specific goals with the visit to the online community:
- To see how far it’s from Rotterdam to Mora
- To create a route and planning the stops along the way
- To see which bicycle area that the family will like
- To quickly find the information
- To save potential holiday destinations for later use
- To print the planned holiday route to bring along on the trip
- To see what others have said about bicycling in Sweden
- To see what other holiday routes are popular
- To see if there’s a mini golf court close by the bicycle route
Hansi Möller
(photo: Johnér)
63 years old. Can communicate in english.
Lives with his wife in their house in Senden, a suburb to Münster in west Germany. They have four children that are grown up and married.
Hansi and his wife often enjoy bicycle holidays along the river Rhen. They also like cultural trips and cruises.
Higher goals with the visit to the online community:
- To find several things to experience during the same holiday
- To find ways on how to make the holiday more social
- To be considered a good “travel planner” by his wife, family and friends
- To find exotic destinations that none of his friends have visited before
- To find out more and deeper information about the destination to be able to inform others during and after the holiday
- To read other’s travel stories before his own holiday
- To explore the possibilities on creating his own travel story after the holiday
- To create his own travel story
User role: consumer and producer
Loyalty: recurring visitor
Specific goals with the visit to the online community:
- To find other’s opinions about a specific cultural destination
- To get in contact with somebody that’s been to the art week in Österlen
- To find a nice restaurant for the visit to Österlen during the art week
- To find good accommodation in Österlen during the art week
- To learn how to make his own travel story and to see if it’s possible to do it during the holiday
- To publish his own travel story and share it to his family and friends
- To see if he can upload his photos here or if he should use another service like Flickr
James
(photo: Juliana Wiklund /Johnér)
29 years old. Works as a doctor. Will spend a weekend in Stockholm with his girlfriend. They enjoy shopping and eating in restaurants. They like adventurous holidays. James and his girlfriend enjoys the fast paced lifestyle but they also look forward to their holidays. The traveling is a part of their lifestyle. They plan and book their trip one month before the trip at the earliest. They usually go on a ski trip every January.
They don’t invest so much emotionally in the travel destination. Attracted to the fresh and popular stuff and activities. Pressed for time. The free time is precious.
Higher goals with the visit to the online community:
- To find as much information as possible in the smallest amount of time
- To do something extraordinary
- To get the most up to date information
- To confirm his choice of travel destination by reading other’s opinions
- To build his personal brand
- To find beautifully designed hotels through other users recommendations
User role: consumer
Loyalty: fleeting visitor
Specific goals with the visit to the online community:
- To find the coolest photo exhibition right now
- To find out what’s hot right now
- To read others opinions on what he’s heard is supposed to be good
- To see photos from other visitors
- To see ratings of places and activities
- To rate bars and hotels
Johanna
(photo: Jakob Fridholm /Johnér)
29 years old. Lives in Paris. Seeks out groups of Swedish people and Swedish organisations. Meets up with other swedes a couple of times every month. She’s does a lot of social networking. Likes to talk about Sweden. Unconsciously a national romantic. Feels the need to give others her top tips about Sweden.
Most likely an active tester in the beta phase of the online community development.
Higher goals with the visit to the online community:
- To show that Sweden is a better place than the one she’s currently living in
- To have an outlet of her national romantic feelings
- To have a place to describe Swedish traditions
- To stay in touch with typical Swedish stuff
User role: producer
Loyalty: recurring visitor
Specific goals with the visit to the online community:
- To tell about her life in Paris
- To answer other’s questions about Sweden
- To take an active part in making sure good content is published about Sweden
- To start a club about Sweden
- To find other Swedes where she lives
- To invite others to a meeting in Second Life
Thomas
(photo: Kindler /Johnér)
45 years old. Works as a teacher in Skellefteå, northen Sweden. Lives there with his wife and two small children. Very experienced internet user. Extremely patriotic to his local region.
Likes active holidays in northern Sweden but also treats the family on a sunny charter trip every other year. Loves to fish.
Higher goals with the visit to the online community:
- To put his local town on the map
- To try and get more foreign tourists to Skellefteå
- To share his perspective on Sweden
- To be seen and recognized by others on the online community
User role: producer
Loyalty: recurring visitor
Specific goals with the visit to the online community:
- To update his member profile
- To publish information about his local region
- To show others how much attention he’s got on the online community
Are you one of our personas?
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MeetingsThe planning group has had its third and probably its final meeting!
Last year I compiled a wish list of features for the online community and this list has been a big part of our planning up to this point.
During the meeting we focused on going through all of these features. We discussed them one by one and decided if each feature should stay or be cut and if it should be in the beta launch or in phase two.
During these discussions we also got to improve some of the features and we even came up with some very good new ones!
It was very valuable to get every body’s input. We complemented each other and came up with some great ideas!
One of the big web trends today is localization. This is something we will put a lot of work into. Every photo and travel story etc will be Geo tagged i.e. it will have a tag stating its geographical location. This makes all the content searchable in some interesting ways and the content can also be visualized in some amazing ways.
Check out this example at Nokia.
We will use Google Maps for these kinds of map and localization features. Using another web service for your own purposes on your own website is usually referred to as a “mashup”. It’s also a big trend on the web. We even went so far as to discuss if the entire online community should be a mashup website using for example flickr, youtube etc. While certainly it’s possible today we decided against it.
We already have some experience with using Google Maps at VisitSweden. We just released our new updated map of Sweden section on visitsweden.com and it uses Google Maps. Check it out and tell us what you think
I now have to put down these new ideas into a requirement specification document which is needed for the development. We’re almost there!
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Meetings Online Community PlanningThe planning group had its second meeting on this past Tuesday. This time we held the meeting at our web consulting agency Webupdate(website only in Swedish I’m afraid).
I think it’s good for the group to meet at new places and this way we all get to see each others offices. And it’s more fun!
What is Personas?
We focused heavily on creating suitable personas for the online community. So what is personas? You might not know and I don’t blame you.
Here’s a good, although somewhat lengthy, explanation from wikipedia:
“Personas or personae are fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Personas are given characteristics and are assumed to be in particular environments based on known users’ requirements so that these elements can be taken into consideration when creating scenarios for conceptualizing a site. Cooper (1999) outlined the general characteristics and uses of personas for product design and development.
In the context of software requirements gathering, a user persona is a representation of a real audience group. A persona description includes a user’s context, goals, pain points, and major questions that need answers. Personas are a common tool in Interaction Design.”
Common tool in Interaction Design indeed. Good thing then we’ve got an expert in the area - Daniel Ilic.
Daniel Ilic about to start the Personas group exercise.
Our Personas
The result of this amazing almost five hour long meeting was five personas. Briefly described they represent:
- DINKS - Double Income couples with No Kids
- Active Family - Family with kids that enjoy active holidays
- WHOPS - Wealthy Healthy Older People
- Swedes, domestic
- Swedes, expatriates - Swedes that live abroad
We’re working on refining these now and fleshing out their “personalities”.
I’ll likely try to get some feedback from all you readers later. It would be great to see that most of you fit into one of these personas and if not, modify them accordingly.
Next meeting will be about brainstorming all the amazing services for these personas.
I can’t wait!
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Meetings Online Community PlanningYeasterday the planning group had it’s second meeting.
It was an almost five hour long amazing meeting. I will write more about it later this week but for now I want to tell you about a brief encounter afterwards that made me happy.
It was a beautiful spring day yeasterday and I decided to take a long walk on my way home after the meeting had ended. Knowing myself and my stomach as well as I do I realised the need for a quick bite in order to quiet the rumbleing bellybeast and to enjoy the walk properly. So I stopped at a little street grill and there I encountered this very nice guy.
Click for a bigger picture.
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Meetings PlanningAfter being kidnapped by the Swedish influenza virus I’m now back, able and willing to write about what’s happening here in our Swedish online community project.
Big news! *sound of starting gun going off*
The newly formed project group just had it’s first meeting.
This group’s task is to set the foundation for the upcoming development project. This means putting in writing the answers of some very important questions. For example;
- What’s the purpose of this online community?
- What’s the goal, short and long term?
- Who are the users?
- How open should the community be?
- Should there be any revenue streams?
- Why should a visitor want to become a member?
and many many more questions…
Of course we already have most of the answeres floating around in the air but an open discussion is always healthy and to put them down on paper will help us later in the process.
The project members
I’ve put together this group by inviting some of the best people in their respective fields.
From left to right in this somewhat blurry picture; (click for bigger version)
- Daniel Ilic, Creative Director from Webupdate
- Hans Leijström, Community Expert from Trive
- Me, Tommy Sollén, Project Manager from VisitSweden
- Maria Ziv, Marketing Communications Director, from VisitSweden
- Mårten Forslund, Account Director from Farfar
The goal of this first meeting was mostly to get to know each other and make sure we’re on the same page for the upcoming discussions. This group will have three more meetings in the coming weeks before development begins.
I feel we’ve got a bit of a dream team here and I think we’re on the right track!
In the next meeting we’ll focus on hammering down some of these questions and determine personas.
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