Geography Of Strangers
Geography of Strangers
How might we disrupt the extractive tourism system by intervening at the mindset level?
#ProjectManagement #DesignStrategy
Org: Venture Lab - The New School || Location: NYC || Date: Jan 2019 - May 2019 || Role: Project Manager
Brief
The challenge: At a moment when the total number of global travelers will double in the next 15 years. Local communities can’t afford to house millions of extractive tourists, exploiting their resources. We can't afford flimsy unresponsible travel.
The Theory of Change: When you travel in the moment, spontaneously, you really show up in a space. you make a temporary home, you feel like you belong there. When you belong, you’re responsible to the people you share your home with.
The solution: Geography of strangers is a mobile game for experienced travelers, global nomads, locals alike to help build a sense of spontaneity in New York City. When you’re spontaneous you’re open, present in the moment, and ready for enriching experiences and people in New York. By a series of secret missions and probing questions GoS encourages play and reflection.
My Role
I acted primarily as the project manager and business model strategist of the team. As the project manager I was in charge of setting deliverables, planning tests, and establishing communication channels (meeting calendars, agendas, etc). As business model strategist I deliver market size analysis and financial projections. As a team we executed customer discovery, secondary and primary research, and product development.
The process
We followed a lean process, consisting of regular test sprints, from customer discovery, market analysis, value proposition, to investment strategy and impact validation. The most important piece of the process was our weekly customer intercepts (short interviews) that allowed us to be in constant testing and pivoting loops.
Customer intercepts
Customer Discovery
Market analysis
Value and brand proposition
Here some key insights from our process:
Travel is the fastest growing industry.
Solo travel is skyrocketing, remote work has allowed more flexibility where we live, people are searching for new sense of community, and theres a pushback against the attention draining nature of social media coupled with a rise in mindfulness in every sector of the economy. It makes sense that travel is the fastest growing industry.
[Using trends, signals, and other market analysis methods we validated the untapped potential of the ‘ travel experiences’ sector]
We can’t afford flimsy unresponsible travel.
The travel products we use are broken. Instagram and recommendation machines make bucket lists of repetitive experiences. Airbnb experiences has turned meeting a stranger into something to buy or sell from a menu, it’s transactional. The current tourism system is extractive.
[Our tests centered around validating our model for intervening in the system at a mindset level. Allowing us to define our scope of solving for spontaneity]
You can’t plan to be spontaneous… But you can get in the mood for it.
By a series of secret missions and probing questions GoS encourages play and reflection. Our product isn’t a product, it's a mindset shift. It impacts traveler at ground zero, starting with themselves. Making them ready.
[We tested it with multiple prototypes and at different fidelities; physical card decks, creating travelers meetups, crashing couch-surfing events, and digital mock ups]
Final Result
A mobile game for experienced travelers, global nomads, locals alike to help build a sense of spontaneity in New York City by a series of secret missions and probing questions GoS that encourages play and reflection.
Lessons learnt
Our customer discovery gave us hints that travelers may not be the only target for this type of product. Further exploration with NY Locals, conference’s attendees, or business events could lead to interesting pivots.
Digital products are important to 1) develop scalable business models and 2) have the ability to test, iterate and learn quicker, however people respond strongly to physical objects (analog components).
