Strategic Events Management (SEM), is a module that focuses on the innovation of strategic solutions that aids transformations within the business, specifically, the events industry. It allowed us to learn about the different components of a business model starting from customers, products, operations, and so on. In recent years, technology has been a great key to the success of events. As such, this module also required us to make use of advanced technology to plan an enhanced experience for attendees.
The initial stages of this module taught us the process of design thinking and the necessary strategies to develop plausible solutions. With the help of the design thinking process, we were able to improve our creativity, innovative and technical skills.
We started off the group project by creating our Persona during our face-to-face tutorials. After completing the foundation of our persona Georgina, we created two problem statements revolving around her. However, we struggled with how the problem statement could be crafted to solve Georgina's pain points and interests.
Initially, we thought about creating an event that would cater to her busy work schedule and bad time management on top of a lack of social life and partner. However, we realised that a 24/7 event is unrealistic and does not allow Georgina or anyone else to benefit long-term.
With that in mind, we decided to brainstorm other options before the next lesson. We had created a physical persona prototype, however, due to the spike in COVID-19 cases, we could not improve on it and had to pivot our discussions to digital meetings and softcopy works. This tested our skills in using technology and digital platforms such as Canva, Power BI, and PowerPoint to create better versions of our personas, value propositions, data visualisations, and more. It was not easy to communicate and brainstorm ideas over a virtual platform, but we adapted accordingly.
Moving on, we crafted our Problem Statement and proceeded to seek feedback from our classmates, and from them, we were able to gather various perspectives and noted issues that we were unable to see ourselves. Their comments were constructive and useful as they were from a user's point of view and could give us feedback about what they did not understand or improvements they may wish to see. This stimulated more design thinking for our persona, which helped to improve each of our problem statement versions.
We decided to make our product a mobile application instead of a 24/7 event. This mobile application could aid our persona as well as other users in the long run and had the potential to be developed even further, using innovative ideas of modern technology.
After which, we started on our Value Proposition where we detailed our persona's gains and pains and supported it with gain creators and pain relievers that could be applied in our application to solve our persona's problems, allowing us to come up with a prototype that best suit our target market. Similarly, we had feedback on what can be improved and proceeded to further developed the different versions.
Subsequently, we did our Customer Journey where we pinpointed our persona's frustrations in her routine. This enabled us to look from our persona's point of view and make improvements to enhanced Timely with functions that will help eliminate Georgina's frustrations and value add to her life.
Following this, we started on our prototype application, Timely. We combined all the ideas we had into the application in the best form that suits our persona, in terms of her a various points such as her pains and wants. Likewise, we had feedback from our tutor and classmates, which guided us to further improve our application.
Not long after, we did our Data Visualisation to identify ideas for our application and understand how we can appeal to our persona by using relevant data. We created different interactive charts using Power BI and Excel to present our data and applied our understanding of how the data benefits our application's development.
Thereafter, we proceeded with our Business Model Canvas where we brainstormed and filled up six of the boxes. During this, we had to think from a business standpoint, if our application, Timely is a short or long-term product and how it can actually stand out in the market. This gave us the experience of what real organisations brainstorm to ensure their products or services are outstanding and useful to their target market. This also pushed us to understand and think of how we can benefit the events industry as well. After our individual presentations where we had to research even more about the different aspects presented by providing insights, we went on to improve the Business Model Canvas and explained each box clearly.
All in all, this module provided us with plenty of opportunities, such as doing up a site, pushing our brainstorming and creativity skills to the limit through different tutorials, creating different versions of our prototype, and so on. We were able to hone our design thinking and creativity skills and enhanced our problem-solving mindset in terms of events. These skills were also emphasised in our Individual Presentations, where we were able to dive deep into the various design thinking aspects while also getting feedback from our classmates. Even though we had a shaky start and were confused with what we were supposed to do, through constant guidance and encouragement from our tutor as well as motivation from one anothre, we were able to persevere and do our best to see the end of our project.
