Your overarching goal is to help an organisation improve a particular customer experience interaction. In order to do that, you should:
• Pick a real organisation (e.g., a for-profit business, government, charity, etc.) to be the focus of your project. You may want to use the organisation where you currently work, have worked in the past, or aspire to work in the future.
• Pick a context or touchpoint in which a consumer interacts with the organisation and the organisation has some control over the nature of that interaction (e.g., visitors to a website, customers entering a store, potential prospects receiving an email or mail-out, etc.).
• Pick a target behaviour that the organisation would like to encourage (e.g., increasing satisfaction, purchasing a product, signing up for newsletter or reward program, spreading positive word-of-mouth, etc.).
• Develop at least one persona for the type of consumer that the organisation would be attempting to change the behaviour of.
• In light of relevant customer experience and behaviour theories, concepts, and findings from secondary sources, make recommendations about how the organisation could change the selected context or touchpoint to encourage the target behaviour.
Component 1 - Progress Report
Weighting: 0%. Length: 1 Page maximum. Due: Friday 5pm, Week 3.
Component 1 - Progress Report is designed to give you some early feedback on your thinking so far. In your Progress Report:
• Briefly describe the organisation and the customer-organisation interaction that you are planning to focus your Recommendations Report on.
o Optionally, you may also place screenshots or photos of that interaction space in an Appendix.
• Briefly describe the persona(s) that you are planning on fleshing out and focussing your Recommendations Report on.
o It is entirely your decision how many personas to describe.
• Briefly describe the key theories, concepts, and findings from Weeks 1-4 of the subject that you plan on relying on to write your Recommendations Report.
o It is entirely your decision how many theories, concepts, and findings to describe.
• The formatting of your Progress Report - including font type, font size, and margin size - are
all entirely your decision. Aim for clarity. A font size of 11 or 12 is usually most appropriate.
Component 2 - Recommendations Report
Weighting: 15%. Length: 2 Pages maximum. Due: Friday 5pm, Week 5.
Component 2 - Recommendations Report is designed to solicit your initial recommendations on how the organisation should design their interaction with consumers.
In your Recommendations Report:
• Describe the organisation and the customer-organisation interaction that you are planning to focus your Recommendations Report on.
o Optionally, you may also place screenshots or photos of that interaction space in an Appendix.
• Describe the persona(s) that you have constructed.
o Optionally, you may also place fuller descriptions and images of personas in an
Appendix.
o It is entirely your decision how many personas to describe.
• Describe key recommendations you have developed in light of relevant theories, concepts, and findings from Weeks 1-4 of the subject.
o It is entirely your decision how many recommendations to describe.
o Stronger Recommendation Reports will typically be supported by research
discovered via independent academic literature scans. o You may place mock-ups in the Appendix.
• The formatting of your Recommendations Report - including font type, font size, and margin size - are all entirely your decision. Aim for clarity. A font size of 11 or 12 is usually most appropriate. Use the APA referencing style.
• Progress Reports that exceed the 2 Pages limit (excluding the title page, References section, and any Appendices) will be penalised.
• Marking criteria:
o Suitability of personas (20%):
▪ To what extent are the persona/s appropriate and well-described? o Suitability of the recommendations (30%):
▪ To what extent are the recommendations novel, plausible, culturally aware, likely to achieve their goals, and likely to be well-received by the target audience?
o Application of theoretical concepts (30%):
▪ To what extent are the recommendations motivated by relevant and
correctly interpreted academic research and customer and consumer
behaviour theories, concepts, and findings from secondary sources? o Quality of report (20%):
▪ To what extent is the report laid out appropriately and professionally with a logical flow, written with no sentence structure issues, typographical errors, or inappropriate use of language all while remaining within the page limit?
Component 3 - Revised Recommendations Report
Weighting: 25%. Length: 5 Pages maximum. Due: Friday 5pm, Week 8.
Component 3 - Revised Recommendations Report is designed to solicit your final recommendations on how the organisation should design their interaction with consumers.
In your Revised Recommendations Report:
• Begin with a revised version of your initial Recommendations Report. Essentially, copy/paste your Recommendations Report and then make edits to it in light of the feedback you received about those recommendations.
o Highlight in yellow or use track changes to indicate the sentences that were changed or added from the initial Recommendations Report.
• Describe new recommendations you have developed in light of relevant theories, concepts, and findings from Weeks 5-8 of the subject.
o It is entirely your decision how many recommendations to describe.
o Stronger Revised Recommendation Reports will typically be supported by research
discovered via independent academic literature scans. o You may place mock-ups in the Appendix.
• Compare and contrast the relative strengths and weaknesses of the recommendations you made. Conclude by identifying the single most important recommendation you have for the organisation.
o Your evaluation may include comparison of the different recommendations' likely short- and long-term plausibility, effectiveness, and reception.
• The formatting of your Revised Recommendations Report - including font type, font size, and margin size - are all entirely your decision. Aim for clarity. A font size of 11 or 12 is usually most appropriate. Use the APA referencing style.
• Revised Recommendations Reports that exceed the 5 Pages limit (excluding the title page, References section, and any Appendices) will be penalised.
• Marking criteria:
o Suitability of the recommendations (30%):
▪ To what extent are the recommendations novel, plausible, culturally aware, likely to achieve their goals, and likely to be well-received by the target audience?
o Application of theoretical concepts (30%):
▪ To what extent are the recommendations motivated by relevant and
correctly interpreted academic research and customer and consumer
behaviour theories, concepts, and findings from secondary sources? o Appropriatenessofrecommendationevaluation(20%):
▪ To what extent are the recommendations' potential, both in terms of practicalities and theoretical underpinnings, accurately compared?
o Quality of report (20%):
▪ To what extent is the report laid out appropriately and professionally with a
logical flow, written with no sentence structure issues, typographical errors, or inappropriate use of language all while remaining within the page limit?