Hypothesis:

We believe students need a platform specifically for buying and selling used items for their personal and academic lives through online and pop-up stores on campus. By providing a platform to buy and sell their used things, we can help promote sustainability, start up freshman's university life, and build connections between students.

Background Information:

Our group has relied heavily on theories from Bland and Luch, and we applied these concepts to our project to verify our hypothesis and understand our targeted group in a greater scope.

Personas served as a communication bridge between potential customers and product developers by creating a common understanding of users' needs and hypotheses that are testable for later experiments. The early personas help to make a mindset for us as designers to generate ideas aligned with the benefits of targeted audiences. Moreover, prioritizing certain personas can further increase our group's confidence level, as we can acknowledge which group of customers could be excluded and identify the large pool of potential customers.

Storyboards can provide us with a visualization of a user's scenario and can transform facts and experiences into shared values and assumptions. It also prevents us from self-referencing, assuming users' problems based on our own experiences or issues.

We used a value accelerator scorecard based on the six-cornerstone methodology to evaluate the value of our product service. We concluded that our product-service channel delivers the most value from the result. Since we are operating based on consignment, we can be flexible regarding logistics and shorten the value chain. However, there would be an uncertainty in the consigner's reliability, with the product's authenticity and condition and the product shipping. We also do not directly handle the product and inventory, so there would not be any product and depreciation expenses. However, if the consigner decided to let us keep the products, there would be a need for a storage space or warehouse. We focus on a very niche target market: students who want to discard their possessions and those who want or need "new" stuff for cheaper and do not mind being second-hand. We would compete with Depop, Facebook marketplace, and eBay, but with a more niche target consumer. With that, we would also need to do market research on the demand for pre-owned objects and which products are high in demand to satisfy our target consumers. For a consignment-based arrangement, an app for online shopping and brick-and-mortar stores for in-person shopping is fitting. However, establishing trust and estimating the value of one's product would be challenging.

Value accelerators are the values of our services and could help us extract values from the market, which refers to the pool of ideas we generated in the beginning stage. We need to select the best ideas from the pool. We can prioritize the ideas that provide the greatest value by evaluating their value to the business and the level of risk. Certainly, the ideal would be high value with the least risk. By leveraging and integrating the top value accelerators into our business strategy, we could gain a competitive advantage relative to our rivalries.

Key Assumptions

Our key assumptions have largely gone unchanged from the previous GLS due to the short time between the two reports; however, we have gathered more data about our consumers, created personas, and stories which all have guided us toward new Key Assumptions.

• Customers want a platform that has ads embedded within the system rather than a monthly subscription system.
• The Ad revenue we generate through the platform will not decrease over time.
• The profile verification system we use within our system will effectively verify all users on the platform to create a safe environment.
• Customers see an increasing need for such a platform with the increasing inflation and associated rise in the costs of school materials.
• The system helps contribute positively to reducing climate change by causing less waste to accumulate (i.e., fewer unused textbooks taking up space while students buy new ones every year).
• Our main customer segment is composed of university students.
• Textbooks will be the most sought-after product, while we will focus on hosting a wide range of products, we will primarily focus on the promotion of textbooks.
• The product verification system will be seamlessly implemented into our application and will ensure the products being bought and sold through our system are true products to avoid any possible scams
• The messages we will use to communicate our product will be effectively formulated to entice potential customers to use our service
• Using a data collection method such as Delphi/Surveys we will be able to effectively collect enough data to use the forecasting method Naive Forecast 1 (NF1) to forecast the number of students on university campuses who would use our service

Course concept: Using personas, choice cards, message and claims analysis, BIBD design matrix, etc. Details are in the pics.

Persona 2 - Leah Goals Leah Influence people to pursue sustainability Having 1ook fans on Instagram . Major in Psychology in her year 2 Age: 19 Bachelor student Frustrations Work: Influencer Networking with peers Family: Single Collaboration with big brands Hometown: Toronto Maintaining balance between school work and influencer life Bio Leah is a freshman student majoring in Art and she is an influencer on Leah is a freshman student enrolled in Bachelor of Art and she Instagram found her enthusiasm on being an influencer since middle school. She has been promoting a sustainable lifestyle on social media and would want to collaborate with brands that have the same vision and mission. . Persona 3 - Olivia Olivia Goals Graduate in 2024 Immigrate to Canada with her fiance Find stability in this new environment Age: 26 Master's student Frustrations Work Unemployed Cultural differences Family: Engaged Strict budget Hometown: Spain Cannot find a job (underemployed) Bio Olivia is a 26 years old woman that is pursuing master's degree at Olivia is an international student that is pursuing her master's degree of UBCO, and she worked as an accountant in Spain. This is her first time Management visiting Canada, and she found it a bit difficult to settle down in this new environment and build connections with peers. Thus, Olivia wanted to engage in activities that could address her problem.Choice cards After we established our product design, we determined our pricing strategy by analyzing the potential customers' willingness to pay (WTP). We used a product choice card to evaluate the WTP of two products. Application 1 Application 2 Advertisements No Advertisements Yes Monthly Subscription |$7 Monthly Subscription $0 User verification Yes User verification No Message and claims analysis We created a choice set with 7 separate messages. We tested it using the Balanced Incomplete Block Design (BIBD). Here are the messages in the choice set: 1. "Same day delivery" 2. "Easy-to-use system" 3. "Best price" 4. "Eliminate waste" 5. "Verified products" 6. "Verified users" 7. "Domestic shipping available" BIBD design matrix Message 1 Message 5 Message 4 Message 2 Message 5 Message 3 Message 7 Message 6 Message 3 Message 7 Message 2 Message 3 Message 6 Message 4 Message 1 Message 5 Message 2 Message 1 Message 6 Message 1Course Concepts Personas In order to explore our potential customers' gains, pains, and willingness to pay, our group has conducted in-person interviews with 10 students on campus. Through the interview process, we gathered and developed a better understanding of the needs and frustration of our potential users. By brainstorming new insights from the interviews and our early personas, we created three new personas that could represent the various types of interviewees. . Persona 1 - Eddy Goals Eddy Graduate from UBCO in 2023 . Find balance between work. social and school Age: 22 Get job offer from desired firm Bachelor Student Work: Waiter Frustrations Family: Single Huge stress on school work Hometown: Calgary Living expenses . No time gathering with friends Bio Eddy is currently in his fourth year in Bachelor of Engineering and Eddy is a fourth year Engineering he has been working as a waiter for Cactus since 2021 Recently, he student and he is working as a waiter found it difficult to manage a balance between work and school. at Cactus Additionally. Eddy has been selling and buying used stuff on Facebook marketplace since his freshman year