Sean Pickering, Ruby Losinno, Hunter Smith and Charlea Schembri
PART 1: Sean Pickering
THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY – INTRODUCTION OF THE INNOVATIVE PRODUCT/IDEA
WHAT IS HIDE AND SEEK?
Hide and Seek is an app that is aimed to help festival attendees and make their festival experience easier. It is essentially a map and communication tool conceived against festival and crowd heavy environments often habitual to the entertainment industry. This app has the intention of helping festival goers ensure all their festival needs are in the one place. Hide and Seek functions on a network exempt from telephone service providers that often get too congested and blocked during events with heavy crowds. The app steers clear of being data driven to ensure that users can rely on the service without worrying about connection failures. This is done through utilising Facebook’s innovative Aquila drone scheme, “a high altitude performance station (HAPS) broadband connectivity system” (Maguire 2017).
With minimal infrastructure and maintenance, the Aquila Drone beams high speed internet down to a specific geographical location within a 96 kilometre radius, airborne for a maximum of 90 days. This technology is beneficial for Hide and Seek as festivally normally range from 1 – 5 days on average. This is ideal for the 1 to 5 day festival environment, that often is deprived of phone service due to remote locations and extremely heavy crowds. Hide and Seek thrives off of its own internet service via Aquila Drone, selling “Festival Data” to attendees of the sponsored event.
Our app provides features and services like no other on the current market, as a majority of them rely on Bluetooth instead of wi-fi I providing a below average user experience with less features that the typical festival goer wants. Hide and Seek has many available functions such as:
- Map Function
- Finding Friends with geographical location
- Group and Private Chat Functions
- Call and Video Chat functions
- Internet Car/Taxi service inherent to “Hide and Seek” to relieve pressure on Uber and Ola services that often become futile and expensive during peak hours
- GPS Marking technology to highlight drunk or vulnerable peers, and threatening situations in need of public attention
- Virtual markers when you walk to food stations, “earn 20% off your ride home”
- Ticket storage – can download ticket onto the app instead of keeping it in an email
- Minimal battery usage
- QR code scanners, that utilise QR code land markers that send navigation to your friend or group’s phone
- Preordering food
- Split payment function
- Emergency services contacts
- Money top up/check balance on wrist bands
WHY THIS PRODUCT/IDEA, WHY NOW?
Hide and Seek is a multi-faceted app that aims to improve the general festival going experience for attendees. In her 2018 entertainment industry report, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian outlined the need to provide frontline health workers with more support during music festivals. One of the main features of the app is its ability for users to use geospatial technologies to mark heavily intoxicated individuals or people in potential danger on the map. Festival staff and medical health professionals are able to view this map and are to swiftly attend to any health and safety problems throughout the festival. This meaning that our app is benefiting the lives of festival attendees and supporting government decisions. Hide and Seek is able to achieve this through long distance wi-fi drones employed over the festival. These drones effectively remove the heavy reliance on unreliable data and cellular reception, making it easier to call and message friends in need. It eliminates the need for 3G or 4G which in dense crowds usually fails. Hide and Seek allows for the convenience of finding friends and allows everyone to choose and mark a meet up spot on the map. This function enables users to remain safe and for their peers to know their whereabouts which is a common issue at festivals. The app also allows users to organise transport through our own ride sharing service to and from the festival ahead of time. The app can also be used to buy and store festival tickets for users convenience and has an emergency services button for people in need. Therefore, instead of frequent festival attendees to use multiple platforms to store their tickets, call for rides and message their friends, it is all in the one application. This was the sole purpose for Hide and Seek, to be reliable and merging of other platforms.
THE IDEAL USER OF HIDE AND SEEK
The most recent Ticket Attendance and Revenue Report stated that over 26 million tickets were sold to Australian festival goers throughout 2018, with the average age of festival attendees at just over 22 years of age. Hide and Seek is therefore aimed at the 18-25 year old age demographic but is also targeted at assisting all festival goers to ensure safe practices are being upheld and to ensure anyone in need of help is swiftly attended too. Hide and Seek is also targeted towards staff, volunteers to communicate with each other.
HOW HIDE AND SEEK DIFFERS FROM EXISTING PRODUCTS
Hide and Seek is an improvement on existing technologies, including other applications and social media platforms. The more specific ones being, SnapMaps, Messenger, Beem It and Uber as it combines these into one seamless and easily accessible application.
When an individual is at a festival or even an area with large crowds of people, the reception cuts out and no one is able to contact anyone. Hide and Seek allows users to send messages, their location or even call for a ride without the hassle of worrying about the level of reception. All existing technology relies on data and reception whereas our app doesn’t which creates a much easier usage. This application differs from existing products as it emerges the most popular communication tools into one place. Existing apps have one or none of the features that Hide and Seek advertises and therefore creates a more convenient space for users. An example of this being Uber. Uber is a very popular and well-known application among phone users and is a ride service for those in need. Although, that is all Uber has to offer. Hide and Seek offers this same deal by having a function to call for a ride to and from the event but also being able to call a ride to a friend or stranger in need. This is one example of how Hide and Seek differs from existing products and how we intended to solve a social problem through a social innovation.
PART 2: Ruby Losinno
WHAT ARE YOU DISTRIBUTING AND HOW ARE YOU CONTRIBUTING TO THE SHARED ECONOMY?
HOW A SCHOLARLY QUOTE SHAPED HIDE AND SEEK The quote that began the idea of Hide and Seek is “social innovation refers to new ideas that work in meeting social goals” from Pol E & Ville, Social Innovation: Buzz word or enduring term? This quote shaped Hide and Seek as it highlights the end purpose of meeting social goals which is exactly what the app intends to do. Hide and Seek aims to meet such goals by bringing people together in a festival environment. Although individuals attend festivals for the music side of things, a major aspect to festivals are the social side of them and this app ensures the safety and communication needs of festival goers are met. It enables users to find each other easily and help others in need which relates to reaching a social goal through a social innovation.
REAL WORLD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY As Hide and Seek functions by using the Facebook Aquila Drone, this is the ‘real world science and technology’ aspect to the idea. The Facebook Aquila Drone is an established form of technology that allows service and data in a certain kilometre range. It has a 94km radius span and uses solar power to deliver internet speed service to users. This means that the app promotes sustainable technology as well as diminishes the app being a data-driven service. The drone also has a 90day flight time and uses only 5,000 Watts of power. This amount of power is equivalent to 3 hair dryers. It is this form of internet and service that allows Hide and Seek to differ from every other communication technology of a similar nature. This is simply due to the app allowing users to contact friends, call for emergency services, book and pay for a ride and many other features without the worry of relying on data.
DETAILED DISCUSSION ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DIGITAL DISRUPTION Although Hide and Seek is benefiting large groups of individuals and organisations, the app also contributes for potential digital disruption. Digital disruption is the merging of digital technologies which may disrupt those already existing. Hide and Seek has merged multiple existing communication technologies such as messaging, calling, video calling, mapping, emergency service apps, and Uber. Thus meaning, the app may disrupt very popular communication apps such as Uber, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Snapmaps and many more. As this application is specifically for festivals, giving it a more niche market, which will be then impacting existing technologies but only to a certain extent. The impact or disruption on other digital services will not be very large, however, certain apps such as Uber may lose large amounts of finances with festivals if individuals decide to use Hide and Seek instead of Uber. The reason for this is that Uber profits a large amount on the days or nights when there is a major event due to a high demand from users that day. As Hide and Seek provides an alternative to data-driven technology with a similar service, it may affect Uber’s and other applications ratings. The app provides a solution to a social problem at festivals, which is the lack of service available to attendees. This lack of service was the motivation for Hide and Seek to form and create something users and stakeholders will highly benefit from. Relating back to digital disruption, as this app isn’t data-driven, it differs from its ‘competitors’ and other applications of a similar nature. This is a fundamental aspect of Hide and Seek which definitely has potential with contributing to digital disruption.
The app can be seen as an improvement on existing technologies and other online communication industries. “Creative industries are impacted when technology transforms established business models.” In the reading Raustiala, Kal & Christopher J 2019, pp 1573, The second digital disruption: Streaming and the dawn of data-driven creativity. Since the rise of 3G, 4G and even now 5G many businesses, services and applications heavily rely on data and the usage of it. These stand for the certain generation and refers to mobile network technology that enables two or more mobile phones to connect with each other using ‘faster internet’. Using this is common among the technological communication industry, however there are errors and flaws to this system. This being said, festivals are growing in popularity, as are the rise of social media and other online communication tools such as Zoom, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. Not only these communication and ride services will be disrupted but also existing online mapping tools as well. Furthering on this, Snapchat is a media giant that is rapidly growing in popularity among millennials today. This app relies on the usage of data or Wi-Fi connectivity and allows its users to locate their friends, send photos and message their friends. An application service such as this one, is a prime example of the errors and failures of being data driven. Daily Mail has covered this with a story based around why Snapchat continues to crash and the frustration behind a popular app crashing. Snapchat has around 190 million users a day and as of this high demand, the application has begun to receive a reputation that is the continuous ‘crashing down’. Having said this, Hide and Seek ensures to work vigorously and in depth towards drone connectivity and in the long run will benefit users ensuring the fast-paced internet connection without failure. This will enable users to be safer at the event and trusting of the service the app provides.
When there are too many users trying to use the same data or too large of a range with users, this is when technical difficulties occur. Many data-driven applications only benefit their users when separate and not at a specific event. Therefore, Hide and Seek, a potential creative industry is impacting technology with a pre-existing, high-tech ‘data’ machinery. Using drone connectivity allows users to fully embrace the application instead of worrying about the many technical difficulties that occur with data-driven technology. Consequently, if Hide and Seek were to proceed in the communications market, it may even cause a digital disruption and demote original, existing data-driven technology. One of the features on the app is being able to send a QR code to other users and emergency services to help other festival goers. This side to the app ensures the safety of festival attendees, from being disoriented to even being majorly injured. Hide and Seek has a major potential to digitally disrupt pre-existing data-driven technologies as it uses and promotes drone connectivity, being at the core of the digital effect. Drone connectivity ensures the app to be fast paced in emergency situations which is the reason for it to disrupt existing mapping services. Many, if not all, established apps and services that this idea stems from are data-driven which is why Hide and Seek decided to steer clear of this path. As the app differs from its neighbouring services, this could be the cause to its potential contribution to digital disruption.
CONTRIBUTION TO THE SHARED ECONOMY Hide and Seek belongs to the access economy, business to consumer economy and platform economy which fit under the shared economy. Access economy offers users access to products or services whenever they please and it helps consumers who cannot afford to own or don’t intend to own a product but may want it for short-term needs. Hide and Seek, is potentially contributing to the access economy as the application offers access to the app when users and festival goers want the service that it provides. This app is for the short term as it is for festival goers and provides private drivers for users to purchase rides between the venue and their homes or wherever they wish to travel too. This creates a niche market for the application, which is, specifically for festival attendees. Business to consumer economy is when companies rent out their goods or service to customers for temporary uses (Frenken et al. 2015) which can happen online and offline. Product service systems refer to the new utilisation concept (Baines et al. 2007). PSS indicates a shift toward fewer resource-based consumption culture, consumers can now favour renting and exchanging information. Through the internet providence scheme, giving users pockets of internet, this shared economy contributes to the usage of this app and the many features that come along with it. Business to consumers connect directly in exchange for free usage of Hide and Seek features to the consumer, which is where product service systems provides unified distribution of the different features of this application. Lastly, platform economy creates online structures that enable a wide range of human activities. Hide and Seek offers an overabundance of online communication tools via HAPS fast speed internet services. This fast speed internet service is the Aquila Drone Technology of which the app runs off of instead of being data driven. The app creates this online structure with the intention of offering the opportunity for festival goers and users of the app to connect with each other digitally, without the hassle of the crashing of 3G or 4G.
PART 3: Charlea Schembri
THE CONCLUDING DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF THE STORY
THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS OF CONVERGENCE
Author Henry Jenkins enquires into the phenomenon of convergence culture, which is exhibited in the early prototype stages of “Hide and Seek”- an application that ultimately brings connectivity through drone wi-fi to areas that are typically congested or internet deficient (In this instance we have placed the drone against the music festival landscape as a first instalment). This alone will push the “migratory behaviour of audiences who are attracted to desired entertainment experiences” (Henry Jenkins 2006), because the internet is the leading communication device of today, as prophesied by Morris in 2002. Hide and Seek is a construct of festival facilities, these being communication, maps, GPS location sharing, e-ticket technology, “uber” function, online food orders, festival currency access and medical services all hinged onto the HAPS drone service provider allowing for the “flow of content” that Jenkins describes (2006). The flow of content relies heavily on consumer participation, and as the absence of internet connectivity is addressed by our corporate drone, there is already a guaranteed user reliance on our services. This is simultaneously supported by the combination of all most-used functions in a festival landscape, as “convergence culture is getting defined bottom-up by decisions made in teenagers’ bedrooms” (Jenkins 2006). In successions to this, Hide and Seek poses the potential for “multiple media cooperation” (Jenkins 2006) through the alliance between Hide and Seek’s application and popular music festivals which broadens advertisement and increases user popularity. Migratory behaviour to user desired functions of the application and drone internet connectivity, describes what Jenkins meant by “Convergence Culture” as a whole.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FIELDS OF COMMUNICATION AND DIGITAL MEDIA
Hide and seek employs convergence cultures through implications of social and cultural spheres of change. The most prominent course of convergence being, providing internet connection to an area that is otherwise struggling with connectivity. This almost assures a convergence culture to the Hide and Seek drone and smartphone application due to the niche we have addressed, and the modern day reliability we have on internet to connect us. Internet connection broadens the social capabilities that were otherwise difficult or impossible at congested festivals. One of the most beneficial attributes of the internet are the uses for inclusion, communication, and in our case safety (Kearns & Whitley 2019). Through Kearns and Whitley’s research the internet’s social inclusion capabilities have seen appreciating effects on an individuals mental wellbeing, this notion is at the crux of Hide and Seek’s purpose through the live GPS location sharing mechanism that keeps friends together. However, while the location sharing services we provide addresses the difficulty of group adhesiveness at festivals, it sees privacy concerns that are notoriously attached to similar applications that already exists on the market. Chen (2019) explores the relationship between attitudes toward location sharing and the strengthening of trust in a service when positive feedback is involved. This means, Hide and Seek would need to adopt “The Privacy Calculus Model” (Laufer and Wolfe 1977), which allows an individual the decision to reveal their personal information. Privacy considerations is proven to exert consumer trust, “privacy control and … policy significantly diminish users privacy concerns about sharing location information” Zhao et al. (2012). This would be employed in our application. In succession with this, all location information would be switched off once the user has left the radius of the festival map. User trust leads to mass usage, and ultimately the phenomenon of convergence culture.
“Hide and Seek” poses the potential for cultural convergence implications through the “Data Incentive” and overall drone internet connectivity features. Festivals are know infamously for dangerous use of illicit drugs and heavy alcohol consumption that has resulted in multiple teenage and young adult fatalities. Predominantly over 2018 and 2019, there have been implementations of drug harm reduction services at multiple festivals, with infrared spectrometers and substance testing. This has had successful results in ensuring the safety of “festival-goers”, with a high success rate in identifying cathinone- a substance responsible for hospital emergencies (Matters of Substance 2018). Drug testing has seen a cultural convergence in converting a festival into a safer environment, and Hide and Seek’s “Data Incentive” continues with that notion. The data incentive rewards users for deeds that help create a healthy festival environment, (i.e correct geo-location tagging of a peer in need of medical attention). Hide and Seek rewards the user with a pocket of free data of 500 megabytes to use at their leisure, or a discounted car ride at the end of the night. This system encourages the cultural shift of creating a safer community within festival grounds, and “fights against corporate … censorship that would pathologies these emerging forms participation and publicise the best effort … of online communities” (Jenkins 2006), this quote stands true to this instance due to the illicit nature of drugs and the concern of persecution around the need to ask for help.
At a Panama festival that was locked down due to the corona virus outbreak, festival goers were stranded in limbo for a week according to Hemmings from “The Guardian”. Communication was difficult due to the remote location and this resulted in poor action from the British Embassy. Many people were outcast, missing flights and transportation home with aggravated mental health issues though the course of the predicament (Hemmings 2020). The Hide and Seek drone would have been an effective source of communication, safety and wellbeing for an instance like the Panama music festival disaster. Cases like this would stand as precedent to proceeding festivals, who would show convergence to Hide and Seek services for the purpose of risk avoidance.
HOW USERS, AS WELL AS THE MEDIA, COMMUNICATION AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES MORE GENERALLY BENEFIT FROM HIDE AND SEEK
Users generally benefit from Hide and Seek’s functions, through drone internet connection, location, payment, car, and communication functions of the application. These were crafted from collective user experiences in the festival environment, and works to address the convenience and safety issues that have been discussed in detail above. There are capital enhancing features that come with internet connection that creates opportunities and work (Kearns & Whitley 2019). Form a creative industry perspective, Hide and Seek opens wide sponsorship and influencer opportunities when employing PR and advertising tactics, this avenue focus’ on the jobs that would be created from a marketing perspective in the creative industry. Sponsorship here could include festival organisations, bars, restaurants, bands and social media influencers. Micro-Influencers have a large effect over the trustworthiness of a product, and ultimately the convergence of the innovation into the public sphere, 82% of latent publics are likely to act on a micro-influencer or peer’s suggestion (Dinesh 2017). The drone now broadens the influencer authenticity as live photo and videos can be uploaded in real time during the course of festivals. The drone shows potential for an internet provider in rural, or poverty stricken area’s. Those who are on the wrong side of the digital divide are behind the rest of the world in being able to communicate, shop, access banking, navigate etc. “The lack of access to broadband ultimately results in a lower quality of life for any community” (Gallardo 2020).
IN TERMS OF THE SHARED ECONOMY, HOW THE BIG DATA COLLECTED FROM YOUR PRODUCT’S USERS AND THEIR BEHAVIOUR IS LEVERAGED AND/OR USED TO IMPROVE THE PRODUCT AND RELEVANT ASPECTS OF SOCIETY
The shared economy is a phenomenon inherent to the online sphere, and has mutated into a new business model describing the sharing of assets with help of technology (Görög 2018). Due to the lack of an umbrella definition for the shared economy, Görög explores the interlinked proliferations of definitions, that connect to innovative business models in the internet realm. Hide and Seek most accurately represents the “access economy” through providing access to festival tailored services in a consumer’s time. These services include map geo-location, medical hotlines and staff, queue jumping online food orders, pockets of high speed festival data and car services. All of these access economy functions collect big data on a key audience of festival attendees. This data is valuable to the ultimate improvement of the application, the festival organisation itself, and in a more important light- the efficiency and accuracy of medical services. Hide and Seek’s big data, would ultimately be used as a feedback loop, assisting in targeting important points such as: the time of day in which most medical disasters occur, the location in which most people migrate to for breaks, peak pick up times, average data usage from the HAPS drone (in order to create data bundles more affordable and relevant to a festival crowd).
In succession to this, recent revenue dynamics from Big Data and Business Analytics (BDA) project a compound annual growth rate of 11.9% over 2017-2022, almost tripling it’s value (Ogrean 2019). Ogrean’s academic journal reveals the monetary value big data has, meaning a large wingspan for the Hide and Seek company development. In a more utopian view, Hide and Seek could capitalise on this tool and develop the HAPS drone in rural areas, to bring connection to people on the other side of the technological divide. This (while it is not within the original festival scheme), would work towards bridging the connectivity gap opening a whole new range of services, and platforms for individual expression that every human being should have access to.
Part 4: Hunter Smith
REFLECTING ON OUR PITCH AND THE FUTURE POTENTIAL OF OUR APP, ‘HIDE AND SEEK
IDENTIFYING AND FURTHER DISCUSSING OUR PITCH AUDIENCE
In order for our app to be launched successfully around Australia, we decided to pitch ‘Hide and Seek’ to potential partners, including music festival promoters and organisers. We believe our app would improve the overall safety and efficient functionality of festivals and therefore would warrant investment by these entities. These companies would assist in funding the development and eventual launch of our app in a festival setting. In addition to festival promoters and organisers, representatives from Facebook were also present in our pitch audience. ‘Hide and Seek’ aim to partner with Facebook as the use of Facebook’s Aquila drone is vital in supplying data and cellular reception to festival patrons and staff through our app. The founding members of ‘Hide and Seek’ will also aim to retain full control of the app throughout its development, and ultimate launch at domestic and eventual worldwide festivals.
WHAT WENT WELL IN OUR PITCH AND MADE THE MOST SENSE TO OUR POTENTIAL INVESTORS Throughout our pitch, we were able to successfully communicate the usefulness and practicality of using our application ‘Hide and Seek’ in a festival setting. As our pitch audience included representatives from festival organisers and promoters, many members of our audience were able to relate to the stress and anxiety experienced at festivals in regards to acquiring medical assistance and finding lost friends. The loss of service and internet connection throughout festivals is something we feel resonated within our pitch audience and the use of a device such as Facebook’s Aquila drone to combat this problem greatly succeeded in positively influencing our potential investors. The use of an incentive based system wherein festival goers are able to use the app to pinpoint persons in need or general safety hazards in exchange for festival data, proved to be a valuable feature according to our pitch audience.
The use of an interactive map within ‘Hide and Seek’ was also praised by our potential investors. The map is a tool that not only lets festival patrons find their lost friends and organise places to meet up, but an important safety feature that allows attendees to easily find water stations and medical supply tents. Patrons would also be able to pinpoint the locations of people on the map who are in trouble or require medical assistance. This function of ‘Hide and Seek’ was praised by our potential investors for supporting the health and safety of festival patrons and addresses one of the main issues occurring throughout festivals on a global scale.
The feedback we received from our pitch was largely positive and the innovation of an application such as ‘Hide and Seek’ was commended. We were complimented on effectively suggesting a great solution to some of the most prominent issues when attending music festivals. We also received feedback from our audience stating that ‘Hide and Seek’ was an app they could see gaining huge support from the general public and potentially investing in themselves.
OUR POTENTIAL INVESTORS FEEDBACK AND THE QUESTIONS RAISED The feedback we received from our prospective investors reassured us of the direction we were heading in with our app and the future potential of different innovations we could employ within it. One audience member stated that our app would be especially useful for certain camping festivals in remote locations around Australia that are completely out of mobile service range even before the festival has begun. It was brought to our attention that the staff and crew who work to set up festivals in these rural and remote areas are completely out of service and effectively cut off from the outside world for weeks at a time. The use of our app by staff members and personnel would allow them to take advantage of the internet connection and service provided, while also alleviating the need for personal radios.
It was also suggested that a prominent issue for staff and crew at festivals was finding an effective mobile texting platform that they could reliably use if certain issues were to arise during the festival. Most of the pre-existing platforms were heavily glitched and would spam the event staff with illegitimate texts. ‘Hide and Seek’ would allow staff to create a ‘help hotline’ for attendees to text in the case of emergency or security issues, without having to go through a third party application as they could use internet rather than texting.
The music festival organisers and promoters that were present in our audience stated that they would potentially invest in our app and provide start-up money for us, meaning we wouldn’t have to entirely depend upon advertising revenue. It was also suggested that advertising would be a key component within ‘Hide and Seek’. Music related brands and businesses would be able to purchase space within our app knowing that their brand retention, attitude and recall will be greatly increased as we can guarantee everyone that uses the app is interested in music related products.
One of our pitch audience members also suggested a clever new feature that we could potentially introduce to ‘Hide and Seek’. Music festival attendees would have the ability to pre-order food from the selected range of eateries available throughout the festival. The attendees would be able to skip busy periods and forego waiting times through the use of our app, ensuring that they don’t miss out on any of the action. This idea could also be implemented in merchandise tents, wherein festival attendees are able to choose and pre-order merchandise sold at the festival. The merchandise will be set aside at the festival for these people and they are able to collect it whenever suits them best.
THE NEW CHANGES, ADDITIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS WE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE TO ‘HIDE AND SEEK’ FOLLOWING THE FEEDBACK WE RECEIVED FROM OUR PITCH
Following the conclusion of our pitch, the group have decided to implement a few small additions and improvements to make during development, in order to finetune the app before we launch.
After the feedback we received from our pitch audience, we have decided to implement a feature that allows people to choose whether they are a festival attendee or staff member. Staff members will be required to logon with a predetermined code given to them by the organisers of that particular festival. This will break up the usage of the app and allows staff members to easily navigate the app and the tools specific to their jobs within the festival.
After discussions on how our app would improve the functionality and efficiency of festivals, the group decided to introduce a feature that will help alleviate the pressure on food stalls and merchandise tents. ‘Hide and Seek’ will allow festival attendees to pre-order food and merchandise, allowing people to forego waiting periods and ensuring they don’t miss out on any of the action.
One of the major features we are looking to implement into ‘Hide and Seek’ is giving the ability to festival organisers to customise and alter the parameters of the app to reflect the functioning of that particular festival, if they choose to do so. For example, some festivals use a barcoded wristband which requires festival attendees to add money to the wristband to pay for food and drinks within the festival, eliminating the need for cash and card payments. Festivals that use this particular structure are able to employ a function within the app that allows patrons to check their balance on the wristband, check the transactions that have already been made, and even top up their money. Festival organisers would also be able to customise the design and aesthetic of the app and include key information specific to their festival. For example, set times and information or facts on artists that will be performing at the festival.
THE OPTIMAL PLACE TO FINALISE THE DEVELOPMENT AND LAUNCH OF ‘HIDE AND SEEK’
When finalising the development and eventual launch of ‘Hide and Seek’, our group agreed that staying based in Wollongong was the best option for our app. Finalising the development predominantly away from the public eye in Wollongong and then launching our app at a comparatively small local festival, ‘Yours and Owls’, would benefit us by allowing us to test the functionality of ‘Hide and Seek’ and tweak any potential issues before we release domestically. This will act as a beta test for our app and we will rely on feedback from festival patrons and staff on any technical or functionality issues that may have arisen during ‘Yours and Owls.’ Barring any major issues experienced through the app, ‘Hide and Seek’ would subsequently be launched at larger festivals around Australia, and if successful, the app would be launched globally.
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Sean Pickering 