Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Assignment 7A

Merging all the social medias into one place

The opportunity that I am pursuing is merging all of the social medias (Snapchat, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) into one place or app.  Social media users are lazy and hate switching between all the apps.  If there were a place for all of these, there wouldn’t be a bunch of annoying notifications coming from all these platforms.

·      The Who: Social media users

·      The What: Social media platforms

·      The Why: Laziness, switching between apps, and annoying amount of notifications coming from all these platforms.

Testing the Who: There are numerous people with this need.  With millions and millions of people using each of these social medias out there, there is definitely an opportunity, especially when collaborating between the platforms is growing.

Testing the What: Social medias and networks are what the TV was by the 1960s: everyone has them.  Most of the time anyone is on their phone anywhere, at any time of the day, they are on some sort of social platform connecting with friends or browsing through their newsfeeds. 

Testing the Why: This comes down to notifications, the hassle of switching between apps, and phone storage space.  If there were one app for all social medias, you wouldn’t need to have 10 different apps taking up about the same amount of data.  Being more efficient is better when you are someone that is lazy.

Interview #1: While talking to my first interviewee, my brother Jacob, I found out a lot about his social media surfing preferences.  He said that while he is on one social media he might get a notification on say Instagram and have to switch to it, wait for it to reload, respond, and then go back to where he was on the other one.  This was problematic for him because sometimes the other social media would reset and he’d have to scroll all the way back down to where he was initially.  One place to look at everything would be more beneficial because he wouldn’t have to repeat this step every time he got off one social media app to go somewhere else on his phone.

Interview #2: My second interview was with my close friend since sophomore year of college.  He said he HATES having to have all the different apps on his phone for his social medias.  He is an avid PrequelMemer on Reddit and said a place to create his memes and put them on the app directly would be a cool feature for the app as well, but I think that goes beyond my additional idea of just social medias in one app.

Interview #3: The third interview was with my girlfriend Gabby.  She deleted Instagram and Facebook from her phone because they were too distracting.  She also said that if there was one app with all the social medias, it would be hard to turn away from her phone (and that app), which is something that I would have to consider if I were to produce this app.  Also, she has to log in in Safari to her Facebook and Instagram, so a place for even saving passwords might be something she would consider.

Interview #4:  My fourth interview was with my mother about social medias.  She is new to using Instagram and Facebook, and she wants to get into even more new social medias.  She said that a place for her to have her new social medias would be cool if it were easily accessible and not hard to go through.  This is interesting because I didn’t think of the people who had a hard time surfing their social medias and is something I would have to consider when designing my place for all the social medias to be.

Interview #5: This interview was with my little brother’s girlfriend Katie.  She said she doesn’t use many social medias besides Facebook and Snapchat on a daily basis.  She even asked how this app would be beneficial when she only had to go on those two platforms, which got me to thinking.  Additionally, how could I have a place for those two social medias?  These are some things I would have to consider when working on this opportunity.

Summarization of my findings:  I now know that everyone isn’t the same as me while using social medias.  I use almost every single one on my phone, whereas some go on their laptop.  Another thing I learned was that people might not know how to use them and switch between them as well as me, so that would be something to consider as well.  Lastly, I think it’s interesting that some people are annoyed with the apps losing their spots while they switch between social networks.