Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TheCityGame pilot (TheCityGame; Feasibility study and mini-pilots)
Berichtszeitraum: 2015-06-01 bis 2015-11-30
TheCityGame is the place for doing social and environmental good actions while playing. It is a mobile application that gives users the opportunity to have fun and get rewarded for performing responsible actions. At the same time, brands and organizations use the platform to participate and enable users to perform the actions while achieving marketing and CSR goals.
TheCityGame is a “serious game” that puts users into a quest for performing good actions and eventually creating a habit out of it. Users participate every time they recycle packaging, batteries or electronic devices, donate shoes and clothes, use public transportation, keep utility bills low or learn through quizzes. Every accomplishment is measurable, rewarding and sharable, all of which are key factors to create a new, consistent, and loyal behavior. Eventually users achieve a social status of how “good” they are.
Brands, organizations and businesses participate by creating missions within the game in order to support sustainable initiatives, collect valuable material or drive more traffic to their real-world locations, which serve as verification points.
With the SME instrument, we intend to conduct market research, user testing, and run mini-pilots in order to iterate on our application quickly, and finally be in a position to launch full-scale. Final products of these actions will be a comprehensive feasibility report and a business plan.
The overall objective is to grow TheCityGame, the mobile application that educates motivates and rewards good actions around the environment and society, into a massively popular application and to place it in the hands of citizens world-wide in order to help them with achieving a more sustainable lifestyle and spreading the word. The opportunity lies in the development of a high-growth business around the commercial opportunities that arise with some of these socially and environmentally good actions.
With TheCityGame, it is the first time that gamification, social networking, and real-time “reporting of good” have been brought together to create a unique platform for millions across the globe to socialize, have fun and at the same time act responsibly in respect to the environment and society. In very few words ta typical use case is the following: The user opens the application, sees which good actions they can perform by browsing through them or by seeing other users’ performed actions, learn about the importance and the impact of an action, perform the action and verify by taking a picture, earn points which serve as a social indicator of “how good you are”, challenge other friends to do the same, and finally redeem these points for gifts.
At the same time on the business side, TheCityGame offers a great communication channel to brands and organizations that want to reach this very valuable community in order to have a platform to promote their CSR initiatives, drive commercial traffic to their stores, and gain access to valuable materials for re-use and recycling. In addition, online donation platforms and charities can benefit from the user engagement that TheCityGame can deliver. This is an issue that they are suffering from, and the tools for TheCityGame to offer charity and donation missions are there (affiliate programs, commissions, and APIs).
The problems that TheCityGame helps solve are the obvious environmental and social problems we are facing, at the level of individual and his/her contributions. Taking action at the individual level is very important here, and can bring much more impact than a top-down centralized mandate, law or directive. The fact that TheCityGame can create a bottom-up movement where desired behaviours are achieved through fun, gamification and social pressure through challenges and mimicking the good actions of others is the real game- changer.
TheCityGame is a “serious game” that puts users into a quest for performing good actions and eventually creating a habit out of it. Users participate every time they recycle packaging, batteries or electronic devices, donate shoes and clothes, use public transportation, keep utility bills low or learn through quizzes. Every accomplishment is measurable, rewarding and sharable, all of which are key factors to create a new, consistent, and loyal behavior. Eventually users achieve a social status of how “good” they are.
Brands, organizations and businesses participate by creating missions within the game in order to support sustainable initiatives, collect valuable material or drive more traffic to their real-world locations, which serve as verification points.
With the SME instrument, we intend to conduct market research, user testing, and run mini-pilots in order to iterate on our application quickly, and finally be in a position to launch full-scale. Final products of these actions will be a comprehensive feasibility report and a business plan.
The overall objective is to grow TheCityGame, the mobile application that educates motivates and rewards good actions around the environment and society, into a massively popular application and to place it in the hands of citizens world-wide in order to help them with achieving a more sustainable lifestyle and spreading the word. The opportunity lies in the development of a high-growth business around the commercial opportunities that arise with some of these socially and environmentally good actions.
With TheCityGame, it is the first time that gamification, social networking, and real-time “reporting of good” have been brought together to create a unique platform for millions across the globe to socialize, have fun and at the same time act responsibly in respect to the environment and society. In very few words ta typical use case is the following: The user opens the application, sees which good actions they can perform by browsing through them or by seeing other users’ performed actions, learn about the importance and the impact of an action, perform the action and verify by taking a picture, earn points which serve as a social indicator of “how good you are”, challenge other friends to do the same, and finally redeem these points for gifts.
At the same time on the business side, TheCityGame offers a great communication channel to brands and organizations that want to reach this very valuable community in order to have a platform to promote their CSR initiatives, drive commercial traffic to their stores, and gain access to valuable materials for re-use and recycling. In addition, online donation platforms and charities can benefit from the user engagement that TheCityGame can deliver. This is an issue that they are suffering from, and the tools for TheCityGame to offer charity and donation missions are there (affiliate programs, commissions, and APIs).
The problems that TheCityGame helps solve are the obvious environmental and social problems we are facing, at the level of individual and his/her contributions. Taking action at the individual level is very important here, and can bring much more impact than a top-down centralized mandate, law or directive. The fact that TheCityGame can create a bottom-up movement where desired behaviours are achieved through fun, gamification and social pressure through challenges and mimicking the good actions of others is the real game- changer.
Our reporting period is June 1st to November 30 2015.
In these months we have done the following which will ara all parts of our feasibility study:
1. User study: (Month 3) We have clearly understoodd the user groups that have the need to use TheCityGame, and the dynamics between them. We performed in person and Skype user interviews, and used all application data to analyse usage data and understand which users are the ones following different behaviours. We saw the dynamics of “challenging friends to do the same” in practice in order to assess how this feature should be implemented exactly, and how strict picture verification balanced the ease of performing an action with the feeling of justice in the cases when a user cheats by taking irrelevant pictures. We also designed new features to overcome problems that we saw along the way.
2. Market study: (Month 3) We saw which geographies are most promising for TheCityGame. We found out that more mature markets are what we should aim for (the Netherlands for example where users are more aware and live more comfortable lives which give them the opportunity to think of environmental or social problems is a greater opportunity than a less mature market like Turkey where there is much more room for improvement). We did this through user testing and online test campaigns.
3. Client development: (Month 6) We conducted 40 interviews with decision makers in marketing and CSR departments of large organizations in the following industries: Telecoms, consumer brands, retail chains, supermarkets, FMCGs, NGOs, municipalities, recycling companies, public transportation companies, grid operators / electricity producers, green product manufacturers, marketing agencies. With these client development efforts we have learned a lot and have locked down our beachhead market, and identified specific customer needs.
4. Scalability study: (Month 3) We performed a study of issues, which arise with growth from a technical and an operational perspective. We looked at systems architecture to support the user growth we expect, and the workforce needed to cover many countries in the following years.
5. Economic viability study: (Month 6) We created a full financial plan, which includes launch and growth phases.
6. Competition analysis: (Month 3) We made a full analysis of existing competitors and the spaces in which they may arise in the future. This includes companies employing gamification in other fields (languages, employee training, fitness), online solutions for doing good and donation-raising, and similar mobile solutions.
In these months we have done the following which will ara all parts of our feasibility study:
1. User study: (Month 3) We have clearly understoodd the user groups that have the need to use TheCityGame, and the dynamics between them. We performed in person and Skype user interviews, and used all application data to analyse usage data and understand which users are the ones following different behaviours. We saw the dynamics of “challenging friends to do the same” in practice in order to assess how this feature should be implemented exactly, and how strict picture verification balanced the ease of performing an action with the feeling of justice in the cases when a user cheats by taking irrelevant pictures. We also designed new features to overcome problems that we saw along the way.
2. Market study: (Month 3) We saw which geographies are most promising for TheCityGame. We found out that more mature markets are what we should aim for (the Netherlands for example where users are more aware and live more comfortable lives which give them the opportunity to think of environmental or social problems is a greater opportunity than a less mature market like Turkey where there is much more room for improvement). We did this through user testing and online test campaigns.
3. Client development: (Month 6) We conducted 40 interviews with decision makers in marketing and CSR departments of large organizations in the following industries: Telecoms, consumer brands, retail chains, supermarkets, FMCGs, NGOs, municipalities, recycling companies, public transportation companies, grid operators / electricity producers, green product manufacturers, marketing agencies. With these client development efforts we have learned a lot and have locked down our beachhead market, and identified specific customer needs.
4. Scalability study: (Month 3) We performed a study of issues, which arise with growth from a technical and an operational perspective. We looked at systems architecture to support the user growth we expect, and the workforce needed to cover many countries in the following years.
5. Economic viability study: (Month 6) We created a full financial plan, which includes launch and growth phases.
6. Competition analysis: (Month 3) We made a full analysis of existing competitors and the spaces in which they may arise in the future. This includes companies employing gamification in other fields (languages, employee training, fitness), online solutions for doing good and donation-raising, and similar mobile solutions.
TheCityGame relates to work program 12: Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. It also touches on work program 13: Europe in a changing world - Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies. The actions are focused on environmental and social good, so very many of them directly reduce greenhouse emissions when performed. Specifically the most important ones are the missions around electricity consumption, transportation, and home heating and cooling.
Examples of green-house emission reducing missions include: Recycle household solid waste: (386 kg of CO2 emissions per year), turning off the light when leaving the room (171 kg of CO2 emissions per year), switching to fluorescent bulbs (18 kg of CO2 emissions per year), sun-drying your clothes (708 kg of CO2 emissions per year), turning down the thermostat 2 degrees (450 kg of CO2 emissions per year), cleaning the air filters in your air conditioning (158 kg of CO2 emissions per year). Based on the known CO2 emissions saved for some of our actions, and extrapolating to include the ones for which the savings are unknown, we can estimate that a person following every action we propose would save around 4,000 Kgs of greenhouse emissions every year or 33%. In respect to society, TheCityGame is a way to engage the young generation in an innovative, inclusive and sustainable Europe, and uses ICT complimented by an innovative business model to enable social innovation in the community
In short, TheCityGame has made more than 5000 good actions possible, and we aspire to many more.
Examples of green-house emission reducing missions include: Recycle household solid waste: (386 kg of CO2 emissions per year), turning off the light when leaving the room (171 kg of CO2 emissions per year), switching to fluorescent bulbs (18 kg of CO2 emissions per year), sun-drying your clothes (708 kg of CO2 emissions per year), turning down the thermostat 2 degrees (450 kg of CO2 emissions per year), cleaning the air filters in your air conditioning (158 kg of CO2 emissions per year). Based on the known CO2 emissions saved for some of our actions, and extrapolating to include the ones for which the savings are unknown, we can estimate that a person following every action we propose would save around 4,000 Kgs of greenhouse emissions every year or 33%. In respect to society, TheCityGame is a way to engage the young generation in an innovative, inclusive and sustainable Europe, and uses ICT complimented by an innovative business model to enable social innovation in the community
In short, TheCityGame has made more than 5000 good actions possible, and we aspire to many more.