The Chicago PhizzPop Challenge: Posted

Here’s the challenge that the PhizzPop Chicago teams got on Friday, November 14th at 4pm.

Chicago 2016 Olympics Bid Awareness

Overview

You’ve been selected by the Chicago 2016 Committee to help provide digital strategies to help Chicago be selected at the site of the 2016 Olympics. Chicago 2016 has less than a year before the International Olympic Committee votes on which of the four competing cities wins the bid. The four competing cities are Chicago, Madrid, Rio, and Tokyo.

One of the key elements to winning the bid for Chicago is getting the city’s youth behind the bid. Teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 will be in their late 20’s to early 30’s if/when the Olympic come to Chicago in 2016. This is the audience that in 2016 will be going to events, and taking their kids to cheer on the next Shawn Johnson or Michael Phelps.

The committee is looking for ways to actively engage and ultimately generate support with the city’s youth in a demonstrable way. It is very important to not just get the youth involved but somehow show their impact/support in a visual/meaningful way. It is also important to somehow find ways to activate those that influence youth, like teachers, coaches, and parents.

Assignment

Your challenge is to determine how and what the mechanisms are used to engage and create interest in the bid with Chicago’s youth (ages 13-18). We are looking for unique, out of the box experiences that can empower the youth to feel this is their bid.

How can next generation devices, games, social media, mobility and new technologies for sharing and collaboration position Chicago in a genuine, relevant and engaging fashion to youth?

While we have not exhaustively discussed all the possibilities, a few of the following ideas have been discussed, and may give you some food for thought for your projects focus:

• Is there a way to leverage casual gaming to bring kids closer to sport? Games like Line Rider and Desktop Tower Defense have become viral and are very successful across demographics. Is there a way Chicago2016 can leverage casual gaming around sports to raise youth awareness in the Olympics? Are there collaborative and competitive components to the solutions?

• Is there a way to connect the youth with local sports groups? How can we leverage the web to help create/enhance local group activities?

• How do we utilize the concept of becoming a “celebrity” to help drive awareness and interest in the bid. In a time where all it takes is a video with thousands of hits to because a “Web Celebrity”, are there ways to allow the youth to promote the bid that also promotes themselves, through the use of cyber status and popularity?

This is not the end all list of possibilities, so feel free to design something completely different as long as it meets the requirements listed below and also focuses on engaging the city’s youth.

Requirements

• A focus on getting youth audiences is involved in the bid.

• The primary interface for this effort will be Web based and use/leverage services to provide maximum reach and utility for visitors to engage at chicago2016.org or some related URL.

• Variations or parts of the experience can be delivered to desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile device, Surface, etc…

• There are multiple audiences for this interface with different degrees of importance. Youth and awareness around the importance of sports is our primary audience. Secondary audiences include potential donors and visitors to the site that are curious about Chicago’s ambition and enthusiasm for the 2016 Olympic bid and have a desire to know why Chicago is a great venue to host the 2016 games.

• Solutions should make use of technologies and services that provide rich, interactive, unique and collaborative experiences that leverage the best of Web 2.0 and social media, but it should also extend the capabilities and effectiveness of these services. (Including use of audio, video, etc.).

• A safe and controlled environment where students (13-18) will feel safe in collaborating. Consider reviewing COPPA rules at www.coppa.org.

• Abilities to close or manage the network to prevent commercial, distracting or offensive content.

• The ability to provide standardization and interoperability of data and content to other networks and platforms to amplify the impact of the Chicago 2016 committee’s efforts at chicago2016.org.

• Interface(s) must be delivered as Microsoft WPF and/or Silverlight 1 or 2 experience as a core enabling feature.

Considerations

The following are considerations, not guidelines that should be evaluated when designing a solution:

• Extending the experience outside of the Chicago 2016 site to other services or properties (including but not limited to Windows Live Services).

• Use of data visualization for both site visitors and Chicago2016 stakeholders to dynamically represent the enthusiasm of Chicago for hosting the Chicago 2016 Olympics.

• Systems and tools that capture and engage audiences consistently between Olympic events versus just during Olympics events. Ideas and strategies that make Chicago2016 a permanent destination for people.

• Looking at how advances in imaging, casual gaming, advocate networks, offline applications or academic engagement can be utilized for this effort.

• Integration of Microsoft Live Services

User Personas

Persona 1: Junior High Student

Name: Alex

Age: 13

Alex lives in Barlett, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. If asked to describe himself he would most likely state that he is ‘normal’ compared to his peers, he’s not the most popular guy in school but he’s got his own group of friends and in his words “Gets along with everyone more or less”. He’s played football since third-grade but due to his diminutive size he’s thinking of giving it up for something else, but he’s not even sure if he really wants to engage in sports much anymore. He spend quite a bit of time with friends play ingvideo games (mostly Xbox) at their respective houses (He recently received an X-Box Live account and uses the online handle ‘Iron Monk’ when he plays games with his friends online, although he’s anxiously awaiting Gears of War II he spends most of time simply handing out online in Halo 3 with his friends or playing Rock Band II with his band called ‘DeathEater.’

Alex has an older brother, David, who is a Junior in Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Recently David has gotten Alex into casual computing games and into DJing, something David has started doing part time. Increasing Alex is spending time online playing games like Line Rider (www.linerider.com). He’s recently set up a My Space page by has only just started using it and plays with his brother’s electronic keyboard which is hooked up to a Sony VAIO running Virtual DJ Pro.

Alex has been lobbying his parents for some time for an iPhone saying it’s essential he has a cell phone for ‘safety’. Finally his parents relent, but to his disappointment he is given his Father’s old Motorola Razor handset after his Father upgrades to a new Motorola phone. “You just need a phone for emergencies, an iPhone is too expensive,” says his Father. Alex grumbles a bit but is using the phone often for text messaging.

Persona 2: College Student

Name: Jocelyn

Age: 17

Jocelyn lives in Hyde Park, IL. She’s just started taking classes at Loyola University in downtown Chicago, majoring in pre-med. Jocelyn takes her college life very seriously, with the exception of her older cousin she is the first in extended family to be going to college. Between work and school she doesn’t have time for much else.

Currently Jocelyn’s life revolves around three groups of friends, those people she works with at the East Bank Club, where she’s got a job greeting and checking in guests that are members of the club and with many of her new friends she’s made at Loyola. Finally, Jocelyn has a very tight group of friends she’s known since she’s been a small child, although still close to all of them she finds less and less time to interact with them, one of them has moved to Lexington to take a job in a family business, one has joined the Army, and one has moved to Iowa on a track scholarship at Iowa State University.

Jocelyn spends a great deal of time keeping in touch with her groups of friends using her Sidekick mobile phone, mostly through SMS and twitter but more recently she has started using Facebook and Friendfeed to keep in touch as well. She’s not quite sure how she could live without her Sidekick or Macbook that she bought this summer with money earned from part-time jobs.

Sharing student housing with three other roommates and being so immersed in school and her new job still has Jocelyn excited but she wonders if she’s missing something and losing perspective. In high-school she volunteered for many activities and ran cross-country and she’s starting to feel a bit guilty that she no longer makes time for those activities. She’s also become a bit more aware and sensitive about how women are treating in the workplace and, most concerning to her, in the medical workplace, after doing a summer internship. Jocelyn wonders if there are some things she should start thinking about in terms of empowerment but she’s not sure where to start.

 

Persona 3: Youth

Name: Darryl

Age: 19

Darryl graduated 18 months ago from high-school. An outstanding athlete, he eventually went to play basketball for a Division III school in Texas with an interest in studying criminal science. As is true with many students Darryl found that this initial independence and being far away from home proved to be a bit too much. After his first year in School he returned home, in considerable debt.

Over the Summer Darryl has been working a variety of jobs to pay down some of his student debt. His parents have been letting him live at home and recently he just got a job driving a delivery truck for a shipping company. It’s a job Darryl appreciates for the pay and that fact that they offer college reimbursement. He’s committed to giving college another go again after he pays down his debts. His biggest passion outside of work is playing basketball whenever he can with his high-school friends. He lives for the pick-up game.

Darryl has never been a huge fan of technology or even video games. He recently picked up a new mobile phone and got a Windows smart phone because his employer was able to get him a great deal on it and he thought it might be a good substitute for buying a computer. He’s using it mostly for texting with his friends and new girlfriend but has recently been turning to Web sites like Yelp.com that help him determine what to do socially during his free time.

 

Persona 4: The Suburban Dad

Name: Ben

Age: 44

Ben is a working father of two (Jim, 12 and Jennifer, 14), and lives in Arlington Heights, but commutes into the Loop every weekday for work on Metra. He tries to make the most of his time on the train to and from work, so he has time at home with the family. On Tuesday nights he coaches Jim’s soccer team and on Thursdays he helps coach Jennifer’s softball teams. Sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the entire goings on with each of the kid’s teams, but he makes it a priority.

Since he commutes into the city, his time during the week with them is short, so he spends some of his time on his commute looking for things for the family to do the next weekend. Sometimes he finds things in the The Chicago Tribune, but a lot of time he uses his laptop with a wi-max card to scour the local websites like Metromix, Citysearch and others to find things the family can do on the weekend.

Last weekend he and his wife took the kids to see the new Earth Revealed exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. He was amazed on how interactive it was and how engaging it was to the entire family. The kids loved it and he felt it was an educational experience for them and that’s what he looks for.

 

Persona 5: Undergraduate Media Studies Teacher

Name: James

Age: 29

James is an associate professor at a four year college located in Chicago. He’s new to the school and the job and was hired with a mandate to ‘break some eggs’. James’ first teaching assignment is in a class focused on video production and distribution. Rather than go the traditional approach of teaching just the concepts and aspects of script writing, production and editing James wants to teach his students about using the medium and social media to make connections with audiences.

He’s particularly inspired by work that Nike has done in this space and the concept of ‘fan media’ that pervades You Tube. He’s even been mildly impressed by some of the online ‘I’m a PC campaigns.’ He’s looking for a subject and social platform that he can use to inspire his students and engage the messiness of user generated video and online media.

James is a bit of social media nut and he’s currently addicted to his favorite tool, Friendfeed. Recently he purchased an iPhone solely because he liked how FriendFeed displayed on his phone and the access it offered to his large music collection.

Although many of his students have Macs the lab he teaches in is a hybrid where Macs are used for editing and PCs are used for Web and online media design and encoding.