4. Fergus
I am the presenter of the
group and show our ideas in a
perfect format. I bring a
sense of humour and a
different angle on the teams
ides as I am the only Boy. I
am fun, loving and my
passions are music and styles.
5. Maddi
I am a creative woman and writer who
has some good and thoughtful ideas
with designing the app and solving
problems. I really hate pigeons, seagulls,
ravens, crows, and watermelon,
cucumber, and peppers; so as long as
there are non of them I will be okay!
6. Abi
I am the organiser of
the group. I organise
our team ideas into
understandable
formats so we can
present our ideas
together, as a team. I
am willing to make
sacrifices for our
team app too. My
passions are: music,
fashion and talking.
7. Dani
I am the business woman
of the group. I set out the
work in a great way and I
help our team to
understand ideas. I also
come up with a couple of
ideas myself. I am a fun
person and my passions are
Strawberries, creative
writing and my friends.
8. Siâ
n I am the Techy of the group
and I love ICT and it’s
capabilities. My Job is to help m
team to understand the
technical vocal and also to help
format our work. I love Maths,
science and most of all ICT out
of the lessons and my passions
are writing, learning new skills
and discovering with my friends.
9. What are the key insights of Operation
Affirmation?
Our team has discovered that many teens feel bad
about themselves whether it’s their appearance or
their attitude they are not confident with;
consequently some teens result to self-harm.
!
We suggest creating and app which builds teen’s
confidence to reassure themselves by daily
compliments and opinions, supporting them on
events that have happened to the app user. Our
Affirmation App would be called ‘Operation
affirmation’.
12. Supportive Research
■Between 1 in every 12 and 1 in 15 children and young people deliberately self-harm
(2).
■There has been a big increase in the number of young people being admitted to
hospital because of self harm. Over the last ten years this figure has increased by 68%
■Nearly 80,000 children and young people suffer from severe depression
■0.9% or nearly 80,000 children and young people are seriously depressed
■0.2% or about 8,700 aged 5-10 year-olds are seriously depressed.
■1.4% or about 62,000 aged 11-16 year-olds are seriously depressed.
4 out of 5 people will suffer from a mental illness such as depression
Having spoken to people at Childline (via the website) and speaking to our own
pastoral support, we found the following information:
The above information goes to show that there is a real need to support students
and young people, further justifying the usefulness of Operation Affirmation.
13. It was important for us to also know what our potential users felt about
the app (and the idea). So we put together a questionnaire and asked 50
students in our school.
!
And this is what they said….
Our own research
!
“It would be really good to have all the information in one place,
sometimes I don’t want to talk to people who know me”
“Having an app to tell you what to do and give you
encouragement would be really good, having
someone say ‘you can do it’ would really help”
“The app should be free, I might not use it if I had to pay for it”
14. Mini Elevator Pitch
We are developing a mobile app for young people aged
between 12 and 16 to solve the problem of self esteem
and social issues that many teenagers suffer from.
Many teens feel bad about themselves whether it’s
their appearance or their attitude they are not
confident with; consequently some teens result to
self-harm.
!
We suggest creating and app which builds teen’s
confidence to reassure themselves by daily
compliments and opinions supporting them on events
that have happened to the app user. Our Affirmation
App would be called ‘Operation affirmation’
15. User Profiles
We interviewed lots of different users from different year groups and
backgrounds to make sure that our app would match there needs. This
is what we found out:
Our typical user would be a school aged teenager (aimed between 12 and 16),
they would be male or female (we found that boys were less willing to talk
about their emotions and feelings)
We found that typically our users often felt vulnerable and upset from time to
time (usually based on pressure from school i.e. exams and friends)
We found that the user would prefer to use it as a mobile app (they said this
would help with privacy issues and be able to use it on the go)
We found that the user wanted something that could give them instant feedback
and reliable information and offer them places to go in their own area (this was
due to transport issues as they can’t drive anywhere)
16. Who’s the competition?
Having spent sometime going through the app store (both in google play and
apple) we found the following:
!
Unique Daily Affirmation (Apple Store).
!
This app has been designed to come up with a random affirmation (“I’m in
control”) which you are meant to repeat. However, it doesn’t fully solve the
problem we are dealing with because, it doesn’t give a personal affirmation
based on your mood (ours will) and it doesn’t offer advice or support networks
(our will)
!
EBT (Apple Store).
!
This app has takes you through a process of improving your wellbeing by taking steps
and offering advice. However, it doesn’t link to local support groups and the advice is
quite complicated and not suitable to our target audience and is quite off putting in its
design (quite sterile, where as ours is more vibrant).
17. Alternative solutions
Having looked at the Apps available (and there weren’t many that did what we
wanted it to do), we then looked at the alternative solutions. These were:
!
1. Going to speak to someone directly
Although we would encourage this and our app does provide this information.
People don’t always have the time to see someone right away and when dealing
with emotional problems they have to be dealt with quickly, and the user might
not have the confidence to speak to someone initially.
!
2. Websites like childlike etc..
!
These websites offer loads of really good advice and guidance. Although our users might
be put off by speaking to them straight away as they might not cover there problem.
Also ringing childlike is a big thing, you might want to get some other advice first
before making that big leap.
18. MVP (Minimum viable product)
Based on our user stories, we have identified the three core MVP features
that our mobil app will need to have, they are:
!
1. The ability to show you where the nearest help and supportive centres
might be (in your local area - this will use the GPS function within the
phone)
!
2. Information is regularly updated with quotes and advice that is
personal to you
!
3. The ability to be able to track and record your feelings
19. Key Wireframe Designs and flow
Having done our research and listened to our
users we came up with the following
wireframe design. The wireframe designs on
the following slides have been designed to be
used as you would the real app (just click on
the links and enjoy!!)
!
By designing it this way it also shows how the
app will flow.
30. Data, Feasibility and content
When coming up with the app, we wanted to make sure that it was using
the existing technology within a mobile phone (but also have the ability
to grow as new technology comes on board. We are confident that our
app would be fairly straightforward to build as it mainly relies on the
following technology and data:
!
GPS data (which most phones have and is used widely in lots of
applications)
Access to calendar or notes (most phones have this capability)
Access videos (mainly from the internet)
Ability to input name and feelings (this data needs to be typed in
manually or it could be voiced/video recorded via inbuilt voice/video
recorders available on most phones)
31. Business Model and Marketing
Based on feedback (surveys and interviews with users) we found that our users
would not want to pay for the app. We did have a concern that if we charged for
an app like this then people would be reluctant to use it and as it could
potentially save someones life (if they were feeling low) we wanted to make sure
that we reached as many people as possible.
!
Therefore we decided that benefitting parities (support groups or local authority
who might want to promote their services) would fund ‘Operation affirmation’.
!
The parties that we feel would be willing to pay would be:
!
Local government departments (to help promote their own services)
Childline etc.. (to promote their services)
Counsellors, church groups, self help groups (to promote their activity)
!
We feel that sponsorship and government support would be the best business
model to go down. When we spoke to local government department (in our area)
they said that they would consider sponsoring such an app as ours.
32. Marketing
Our three core marketing activities would be as follows:
!
1. Promote the app within local schools, this would be done via school websites
and also in local newsletters. We feel that this would enable us to reach our
target audience in a very quick and cheap way.
!
2. Use of social media. We would consider creating a facebook page to promote
our app (the app would also be linked to Facebook). This will help us reach a
wider group of people (especially those heard to reach young people who might
not go to school) and encourage people to share the app
!
3. Create a simple promotional video and upload it onto youtube and distribute it
you youth clubs and schools to played in assemblies
