VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 18:58:05 07/16/02 Tue
Author: Michael Supancich
Subject: Draft Senarios and Competitive Analysis

Actor: John is 60 year old male. He is fairly active and possesses a small but standard assortment of personal electronic equipment including a cell phone, a palm pilot and a CD walkman. He has just bought a new MP3 player.

Problem Senario #1

John has decided that he is going to go for a walk to the store for some exercise. He decides that he is going to listen to some music on the way. He decides to take his new MP3 player because he wants to listen to some music, explore how it works and because it is lighter than his old CD walkman. He has already downloaded some music into it. He thinks about where he would like to place it. He would prefer that it attach to his belt because that way it stays out of the way. However, he only has a shoulder strap. He plugs in the earphones and leaves the house. He looks for the button that pushes play. He had to look closely to locate the play button because he does not have his reading glasses with him. He does find it after a few minutes. He wishes that the identity of the button was a little more visible but is thankful that the device only has a few buttons to choose from. He starts the MP3 player. It begins playing his selection of songs. As he is walking, he decides that there is a particular song that he wants to listen to. He has to stop and locate the forward button. He starts forwarding through his songs and wishes that where was an LCD that displayed a playlist because - though he downloaded the songs in the order he wanted them - he does not remember the number of the song. He finds the song and continues to the store. There he takes off the headphones but has to carry them around with him. He also looks for the off button. Finding it he pushes it but drops the MP3 player in the process. He picks it up and it seems ok. He is glad that it is fairly durable because his grip and reaction time are not what they used to be.

Problem Senario #2

John needs to download some music for his new MP3 player. He attaches the MP3 player to the USB cable and a GUI automatically loads itself. He is happy that it acts like his digital camera with respect to this because he does not know his way around the computer very well. He wants to download jazz. He enters jazz into the search prompt next to type of music. He ends up with a number of music sites. He does not know which one has the song that he wants to listen to so he clicks on one. A web site is loaded through Internet Explorer and a list of music available at that site is presented. He wishes that it was a little shorter but, luckily, there is a text box that allows him to search for an author. This is not always present and he thinks that it would be a good idea if this was simpler - maybe a little more uniform of a process. He locates the author. Luckily it is free, he hates to pay online with his credit card and generally avoids downloading any songs that require him to do so. He wishes that there was a better way to pay. He clicks download. The file automatically downloads into his hard drive. He then closes the web site that had the music. Back at the application, the music on his harddrive is displayed. He has to scroll through it because he has downloaded a lot of music. A list of music and available memory on his MP3 player is also displayed. He has enough memory so he does not have to erase any current songs. He selects the song and hits load. Done with his task, he closes the application and unattaches his MP3 player.

Actor: John creates and runs a World Wide Web site that sells MP3 music. He is fairly knowledgable with respect to his job and had done a lot of the development for the site.

Problem Senario #1

John has just set up a new web site from which he intends to sell MP3 files. He has to add some MP3 music files to his site so that they can be downloaded. He had a script that will install the list of files into the database that runs behind his site. He has also purchased all the licenses for the music from a particular music company. The company requires that he keep track of the number of times that each particular MP3 file is downloaded and to submit monthly statements along with the licensing fees. He has to figure out a method to do this before he can begin selling. He, therefore, comes up with a method to track the beginning of each download - thinking that this is a good idea. After several week, John gets an argry email from a customer. The customer has tried to download several songs for which she has been billed but her model connection was dropped prior to the completion of the call. John is not quite sure what to do since he has no way of telling whether she in fact had this problem. He decides to trust her and give her his money back. He realizes he needs a better system.

Problem Senario #2

After several months of running his site, John does not have a very significant customer base. He asks a friend to look at the site and see what is wrong. The input from his friend is not very good. It turns out that his friend, who is technically savy, had a hard time figuring out the site. Still, he wonders if redesigning the site is going to turn off those customers that use his site frequently since it has taken a long time to build that base up. He wishes that he had his friend look at the site prior to now. He decides to leave the site alone, its going to take a long time to redesign it and he will loose too many customers.

Competitive/Pre-Cursor Evaluation

The potential customer base for the MP3 player that we are selling possesses a fairly broad range of musical devices. These devices fall into two catagories. The first are those that are not portable, such as stereo systems. The second are devices that are portable. The bulk of the interviewees possesed a portable music device, which is the kind of device that we are going to be competing with. The rest of the interviewees need to be convinced that a portable music device is a solution. A third potential competitor, computer based MP3 players, do not seem to be utilized by our demographic, nor are they portable.

The majority of the interviewees already possessed and used a portable CD player. Overall, these CD players can range from fairly feature heavy to very simple. All possess several key features: play, rewind, forward, stop and volume. Some, but not all of the CD players also have a radio. The demographic seemed to be most drawn to CD players that are simple and easy to use, with larger and logically layed out buttons. The demographic also is drawn to those CD players that are lighter. They generally do not use many of the features that are located on the CD player. Many of them have an investment in music CD's that can be used with this technology.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.