Target Audience & Creating a sense of Community

One key aspect of this whole brief that up until now I hadn't fully considered was my target audience, this is especially important since my decisions for the app needs to have a solid basis.

My main target audience I would say is roughly 15-65, this was based upon the fact that this age range encapsulates pretty much everyone who will be using the app not necessarily who will be using NSB as a whole. But this audience is very broad and everyone within it will have different specific needs so i decided to break it down into sections. Most teenagers and young adults that use it will likely be proficient in using the app considering they grew up and been nurtured by technology the majority of their life. 

Those in their early 40's and onwards may or may not be used to technology, a mobile phone or even apps on a smartphone so I thought that this is where my main focus for the app should be concentrated. Making the app approachable and useable for those who aren't familiar with it will hopefully create more loyal and consistent users that you wouldn't typically have with other apps.

This sparked off an idea to creating something of a personal assistant within the app, having it as something useful to fulfil the individual needs of the user, rather than just a partially obsolete app where u may occasionally check times and buy tickets from. Because often if apps are confusing, hard work or just all round tedious people will revert to the old ways of purchasing tickets from the station vendors when they arrive there.

Considering my main value for NSB was to create a sense of community and for NSB to be involved within it, I noted down what it meant to be part of one from both my experience and others'.

The main point I took from it was this idea of exchange between the people within the community, often consumerism is a constant one way stream with odd bit of discounts and such every now and then, but these are often general and not personal to the individual consumer.

I want to incorporate a personal touch to the app meaning that it makes the user feel more comfortable using an app that is catered to them, their needs and their preferences.

I think that what makes a company more than just a constant product churning factory is creating a sense of something bigger than just you being a consumer, buying their products year in year out and ultimately becoming a slave to their ways. Instead it means giving back to your community in more ways than one, a good example of this is Apple. They are known for being generous in terms of charity donations but also getting involved with schools and even making their employees feel like part of a family by looking after them well.

Professionalising Screen-Based Design - Interior Architecture

One thing I wanted to look at was interior architecture of different types of buildings, e.g. supermarkets, banks or clothes shops. I think that analysing the way these different types of buildings are planned out and with the way the products or points of access are displayed, will in turn help me with giving me ideas on how my website/app should be organised and how it should flow. This means taking ideas of colours and shapes used within the shops to help convey my chosen values within my final designs.

Supermarkets

They're very organised with each shop normally having a set layout of isles and within those isles each individual product having it's own section. 
Forcing the user to weave in and out of each isle, ultimately buying a lot of unwanted products which is the supermarkets strategy.

As for the colours, supermarkets often section off different areas of food with different yet appealing colours to draw in the attention of the user.

The typography used within the shops is usually relatively soft, approachable and often inviting which when couple with the use of colour catches the eye of the consumer.

Banks

Banks are usually open plan with a lot of free space surrounding the stalls which suggests that they've got nothing to hide. This emits a feeling of reassurance that gives the customers confidence that they're trustworthy. Because for example if the bank had lots of little segregated areas within the bank, you'd be a bit curious as to what they were doing behind these walls.

The interior architecture of banks appear structurally very sound, using blocky edges, corners and columns suggesting the building and the company itself is solid further giving the customers confidence in them.

Colours used with banks are usually in line with the companies branding, meaning it's quite safe and corporate colours, the image above perfectly illustrates this. The colours don't make you feel any emotion considering how monotonous they are, they're almost a reminder of the boring reason you're in the bank in the first place.

Clothes Shops

Clothes shops are ones that out of the three examples stand out the most in terms of colour and shape, that's usually always dependent on the branding itself and also the clothes they're selling. Whether that be bright colours such as with Superdry or dark, more earthy tones of All Saints.

But one thing that all clothes shops have in common is this overarching theme of freedom within the shop. You aren't constrained to isles like with supermarkets instead from the moment you walk in there you can see 90% of the clothing already which straight away grabs your attention to explore further. Most items are around eye height or just shy of that so that the customers aren't obstructed by anything and can freely see every product in the store. Often no space is wasted in a shop, aside from the free space to walk around the stands, the majority of the walls are covered with more products, again another technique used by the brand the same as supermarkets use the isles.

All Saints Interior

Superdry Interior

Analysing all of these different types of shops raises the question of how I want my users to navigate my app or website, whether that be freely or to be stuck to a set path. Although a shop and a website differ hugely they still both have one thing in common and that's they have to think a lot about what they want users to see upon arrival, how they want to the users to navigate the shop and what they want the end product to be (ideally leaving with them having purchased something).

Professionalising Screen-Based Design - Further Examples

Following on from the example in the previous blog post, I wanted to delve further into what Apple actually do for the community, not just customers or employees but anyone at all.

I spoke to a friend of mine who currently works at Apple and asked him about anything that Apple do that benefits others and gets them more involved with the community.

So not only do they take extremely good care of their employees, they also take into account the effort the employees are making to better other people's lives by matching any donation made by employees.

Along with all of that they create chances for the younger generation to get more involved with and have chances to work with Apple and their products, win win situation really. This allows for both the children to bond amongst themselves but also with Apple as a company, furthering this idea of a community.

Supposedly Apple have plans to expand on their current progress by helping out the community in more ways than first imagined. Giving local artists the chance to display their work in the hope to grow and develop, which for a company which isn't necessarily directly tied in with art, is a huge great gesture.

This all is in favour of my idea of having involvement within the community as a key value of NSB as this would make for strong and long lasting relationships between the company, their employees and also their customers. In turn, making the customers feel comfortable during their journey but also creating an experience for them.

Flytoget

Los&Co recently created a few short but sweet adverts displaying the true power, quality and convenience of both Flytoget's app but also the company as a whole. The whole advert just flows seamlessly without any visual interruptions much like the actor's journey from the comfort of his bed to the comfort of his train seat.

He feels like he's in a bubble of calm in everybody else's stress and the main apparent reason for this is their app, with how easy and convenient it is to use. It keeps the user updated with delays to their trains meaning they can breeze through streams of worrying people with confidence that he will arrive on the train on time with no problems.

I think that this is how travel/transport apps should be, they should keep you in the loop about everything related to your trip(s) to ensure you have full confidence when travelling with them. This could be a simple thing such as a pop up notifications or alerts from the app that inform you about any updates and is something that I want to be a feature within my app/website.

Flytoget Ad

Professionalising Screen-Based Design - NSB Values & Strategy

To establish the important values or at least the one main value of NSB, I need to first understand values that should be important to a transport company but also how NSB convey themselves.

NSB try to convey themselves as warm, charming and an experience to travel with. Along with that they consider themselves to be comfortable, effective and environmentally friendly, which is something that I think most transport companies should strive for especially with the problem of huge amounts of greenhouse emissions that are given off during the course of a journey.

Most companies, if not all, should already have a set of baseline values that should be expected from them, regardless of the industry that they're in.

Reliable
Trustworthy
Fair
Quality

Without these values, I don't think there would be much sense in using or working with them. Imagine an unreliable transport company, if you rely on them to get you to and from work everyday but yet they're consistently late which in turn makes you late, you wouldn't use them would you?

If a social media company wasn't trustworthy enough to keep your private details safe and instead distributed them far and wide, again you wouldn't continue to use their service. And so the list goes on.

Sometimes companies do more than what is expected for example, by being environmentally friendly, efficient or innovative, these are the companies that often prove themselves to do better and overall be better pushing the boundaries of what is expected. Take Tesla for example, their range of electric cars are not only innovative but solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions that would normally be emitted from a petrol powered car and so in turn are environmentally friendly and they're already a huge success.

I think when it comes to establishing a companies values, you have to first figure out their priorities and then work from them. Because as with any big company, they may have their immediate and more obvious priorities. Take Apple for example, their main priority is being innovative and creating new and better products year in year out. But more importantly than that Apple strive to create a community of people through various ways. Because as with Apple, yes you are buying a product from them, but you are always buying into a kind of lifestyle and with that comes a sense of community with both the company and other Apple product users.

Another way Apple do this is through donating to charities and helping out the more unfortunate parts of the community.






This is one reason why I believe they are so successful, they create this feeling of warmth and community spirit between users of their product. I think the same can be applied to any company, whether that be a food company, healthcare company or like in my case, a transport company.

Creating a sense of community would in turn give off the impressions of warmth and charm and would potentially leave the customers with an experience as NSB are trying to convey. Also it's been proven that having a community results in higher employee morale and better retention and the chances are if the employees are well looked after they will feel much more confident and 'at home' with their job, which would also reflect on their job performance ultimately creating a better experience for the customer.

Having travelled on many different transport services before, I know myself that if an employee appears unsatisfied with their job, or is possibly even rude to you or simply just not helpful then it makes you feel unwelcome and is not at all comforting.

No one likes to feel alone and feeling like you are part of a community, I think, is the best way to build stronger and longer lasting relationships with your customers and also employees.

This is why I believe that the main value of NSB that I want to pursue with this rebrand, is community involvement with I think goes hand in hand with passion. Because I think that if you are even the slightest bit passionate about your job, you are likely to make more of an effort in every aspect including being well involved with your customers and employees.

Professionalising Screen-Based Design - NSB Visual Profile

Visual Profile

NSB consider themselves to be comfortable, effective and environmentally friendly with the hope to convey a feeling of light and fluffiness.

Few examples of how they portray themselves with appropriate pictures to fit with the words. 

"Warm & Charm"

"Airy & Easy"

"Pride & Experience"

Given that was given as a requirement within the brief was to stick to the already existent NSB visual branding there were some things listed within their visual profile on their website that I think will need to be taking into account.

One of those things is with their logo:

'To ensure readability, it defined an area around the logo that should be free of text and other visual elements.

The grid around the logo shows the minimum air and protection around the logo.'

What to do and what not to do with their logo

These pointers are something that I should bare in mind when I come to designing the website as not only do they help with legibility issues related to improper use of their primary and secondary logos as the colours of their logos and the background images don't contrast well enough to allow the logos to stand prominent, as they should on any website.

Primary Logo

Secondary Logo

NSB has developed an icon bank to help users navigate the information but with that comes a list of things not to do with their logo, again these are something I will have to avoid doing when it comes to the design stage.

Do not:
- Use too many icons on the same surface
- Create new icons or modify existing
- Use colors other than what is stated in the design manual
- Using icons in smaller sizes than the minimum size specified in the design manual

Sizes:
- Do not use less than 14 px on screen
- Use the appropriate icon at the right size - there are three variations of each icon.
- Use the same size (or a logical system size) on all icons within the same flat.

Selection of NSB's Icons

Colours

Main Colours

'Red is NSB's primary color and the main color in the logo. Red is well suited for headlines and can replace black headlines in such ads.'

'White is an important color for NSB and symbolizes purity and in combination with green, environmentally. White makes text, information and photo get better forward and provides a contrast between all elements. In addition, it helps the NSB logo of a major and worthwhile visual space on a surface.'

Main Colours

Additional Colours

'Grey - NSB also need a neutral colour like grey, where we have four different shades. These we use when needed.'

'Orange is used when we will enrich the profile. Important is the colour used wisely, it is red muffled in a flat, orange may be highlighted, but not both colours, then it quickly becomes a little circus.'

Accent Colour

'Green speaks for the environmentally friendly side of NSB. It is not intended to use the large green expanses, but rather in the text where NSB will talk about the environment. The green color should be used sparingly and subtly. It is also possible to integrate green color in the photo. For example, close-up of leaves, trees or grass.'

Map Line Colours

'In communication and information on the new route network in Eastern Norway, we use certain colours on line map and line designations. These colours are dedicated to line map special and should not be used for other purposes.'

Typography

NSB will have an airy, clean and modern typographic expression.

- Myriad Pro (primary font used for headings, titles, introductions, between titles)
- Bembo (support font used for body text)

'NSB want to be clear in all communications, it should therefore be sought to develop precise, short headlines in all publications. By highlighting one or more words we achieve focus on a desired theme. Myriad Pro Light can be used in headlines to highlight the message.'

Professionalising Screen-Based Design - The Elements of User Experience (Book)

Elements of User Experience is a book that covers the process of developing a product, website or anything that will be used by someone. It addresses the 5 different steps (planes) that any designer should work to, to ensure that every knowable need of the consumer is covered but also that the aims of the business and the intended aim of the product/website in the first place is covered.

The Five Planes

This structure of planes I think will be a huge help in terms of developing my website or app as it will give me a better understanding of every step I need to take in order to meet the requirements and needs of both NSB and also the users.

A brief breakdown of each plane:

Strategy is essentially a combination of what you want to get out of the website or app as the business, like setting certain goals to achieve such as 'Sell 100 tickets a day'. But also what the users will want to get out of it such as being able to buy their tickets or plan their route with ease.

The scope plane covers all of the functions and features that will be included within the website and that will address any potential conflicts or hiccups with the product.

The Structure plane is a more abstract version of the above skeleton plane, and so will define how the users get to each different page. Whereas the Skeleton plane is more to do with the placement of the buttons that will allow the users to navigate the pages but also where the text and images that will be positioned.

Last but not least the Surface plane, this covers everything visual to do with the website, essentially what the user will see when presented with the website.

Each plane is equally as important as the other, because without any one of them the designers could lose sight of what's the most important of the whole project, such as the values of the company and needs of the user. And so this something I will keep in mind during the whole design process.

Professionalising Screen-Based Design: NSB Redesign (Brief)

NSB is essentially Norway's government owned railway system, from ticket purchasing to maintaining the tracks themselves, every step of the process is NSB's responsibility. But this spring all sections in Norway being put out to tender to the private sector, and so there will be international competition.

To name a few competitors:

Mtr.com.hk (Hong kong railway)
sj.se (Swedish railway)
dsb.dk (Danish railway)
Bahn.com (German train)

In the past NSB haven't had to compete with other companies to survive but now they need to stand out in the market to ensure they stay within the running race.

The brief is to design a new UI for mobile and desktop, be that a mobile app or both mobile and desktop compatible website. Two required sections for the UI is to include "Where will you travel from" and "Is my train on time?".

One thing to bare in mind when designing is their values and how they want to be perceived:

- Substantive

- Confident
- Charming
- Surprising