Implementation

Adoption and Diffusion

Our early adopters are local museums, colleges, individual professors and college students in New York City.

Since museum adopters don't bear any costs, museums will have relatively low barriers to adopt the product. We will partner with as many museums as possible, especially those museums that have established relationships with local schools and colleges. Besides collecting, preserving and displaying objects, another important aspect of museums is educating the public and enriching their learning. Museums would have the incentive to partner with us because our search function and educational value will encourage more people, especially the young generation to visit museums and help them learn more about the arts and objects in the partnered museums. Therefore, the purpose and mission of our learning design align with the educational objective of the museums. However, since many museums do have their own mobile application, whether they view our application as a potential rival to their existing application might require further surveys and interviews.

One additional consideration is to convince museums that our content information is reliable and accurate. Museums are likely to speculate on the sources of the learning content on the application. In this case, having sufficient knowledge experts with credentials and related background on the team is crucial. Ensuring quality of the knowledge information is vital prior to reaching out to colleges, professors and students as well, as these adopters will likely cast doubt on the credibility and reliability of the educational content on the app.

Since there are many other similar types of applications existing in the market, promotional videos that emphasize on product differentiation would be extremely helpful to help adopters understand our advantages. Initiating a campus ambassador program that aims to recruit professors and students to promote the product with their social network can be influential in the initial expansion phase. Providing bonus and reward based on registration rate may increase incentives of the participants and achieve an ideal user base more quickly.

Customer services via email and phone will be the most convenient for the adopters, yet providing similar support would induce cost on human resources. In contrast, video tutorials and a Q&A page will be more cost-efficient, but limitations on information might not be able to satisfy individual concerns and needs. A mix of both types will be the best form of post-adoption support, with mainly the tutorials and Q&A to answer common inquiries, while providing just a few customer service channels to answer dire concerns from the adopters.

Implementation

During the stage of implementation, the design team, customer service staff, and marketing staff need to make sure their target users, investors, and partners (i.e. museums) are satisfied with the status quo.

Users’ primary focus is on if they can learn things they need effectively from the app. To achieve this goal, we would include a tutorial at the beginning to introduce the main functions of the app. Users can customize learning experiences by selecting content they are interested in and the length of time they can contribute each day, thus setting goals for themselves. To track their progress, under the course menu, users can see their course list and the completion percentage of each course. If they face any problems, they can contact customer service to seek support. To incite users’ participation, the app would push a notification to remind users of their course progress each day. When clicking the notification, users would be transported to the related page to complete their course. If there is a person who leaves a comment underneath the “punch-card” post, users would receive a notification as well.

Investors and partners’ primary focus is on if they can earn profits and reputation from the app, which is associated with the user experience. If users feel engaged and satisfied with the app, they will recommend it to other people, such as friends and family members, thus increasing profits. In addition, the app would give recommendations of nearby museums where conserving related artworks to users. So, this would increase users’ possibilities to go to these museums. Our collaboration with NYC museums can help us to attract more users as well.

Institutionalization

As discussed above, the stakeholders that are most crucial to our app include investors and museum partners. Some of the most valued conditions to them might be dissatisfaction with the status quo and reward and/or incentives. For example, to ensure that the stakeholders are satisfied with our product performance, we should make sure to tie stakeholders’ expectations to our strategy and tactics. A plan should be established so we can always report back on those to stakeholders. Another thing to keep in mind is communication. A straightforward communication can help move toward a common goal, and address issues as soon as possible. Have regularly scheduled communications like emails, monthly calls, or meetings to handle potential issues that might arise in the future. For our partners, like museums in New York City, what they might care about the most is whether or not our app can help them bring new revenues. To convince them that our app will bring rewards to them, we will continue iterate and put efforts in making our product align with the needs of the users, which will eventually benefit the museums.