This document summarizes the background and goals of the proposed mobile application "HandyPlum". HandyPlum aims to help handmade crafters manage their finances and connect with other crafters through a social networking platform. Specifically, it allows users to track spending, set savings goals, and share business tips. The target users are twin sisters Ashely and Alissa, who want to start their own craft business selling jewelry and clothing but currently lack financial management skills. They hope HandyPlum will help them analyze spending habits, save money systematically, and ultimately launch a successful craft business of their own.
2. Hypothesis This hypothesis presents the thesis that the pragmatic aspects of the internal design thinking practice of communication design may be applied to “crafters” (the crafts profession), to help create a more business-like avocation. Crafters are introverted and tend to focus on their individual crafts, and the narrow community of their fellow crafters. They often lack the skills to communicate effectively with consumers and organize their finances. This hypothesis clams that communication design is outward-looking and can motivate crafters to participate efficiently in social networking, money management tools and other communication trends to increase sales.
3. Crafter Creates innovative, tangible objects with creativity and imagination. Crafters are evolving to lead freestyle cultural and trend groups and proliferate in the modern craft society.
4. Past Mostly groups of wives or individuals working at home while waiting for their husbands to return from work. They had limited sources to sell or trade their crafts.
5. Present Crafters in the 21st Century are still individualized and are working in their studios, but they want to associate with their consumers more efficiently with the use of the internet. They have more chances to meet potential clients to associate with and they are mostly independent women who seek to be professional crafter, not just treat craft as a necessity.
6. What’s so special? Connection Opportunity Expression Tangible One of Kind
9. Project Description ‘HandyPlum’ is an interactive money management social network system for handmade crafters who want to start up their own small business. Its features aid crafters in group connectivity and small business management.
10. Target Audience The target audience of ‘HandyPlum’ is handmade crafters, ages 25 to 45, who want to own their own handmade craft business, but who have difficulties managing their limited budgets.
11. HandyPlum’s Goal Create a user-friendly communication environment that provides a ‘Do-it-yourself’ money management system for handmade crafters Help them to manage and improve their limited financial issues with social network services (SNS). Creates community involvement by sharing community member’s social business techniques and social skills. This project adapted social game methods, which is level up system that provides users to customize and decorates their profile page when they earn special badge (i.e ribbon, new paper texture, color theme, etc). Also the users can view anonymous member’s goal and their goal status to build encourages.
12. Creative Brief Conclusion This social network community is NOT for the sale or purchasing of handmade crafts, it is for crafters to share their project goals and encourage others to keep up with their own and to be strong to reach their key goals, which will ultimately aid in owning a small business in the future. This project uses social network systems to set the foundation to start a new craft business. The community members should share their goals, ideas, information, and encourage each other. This project also provides connectivity to sites like Twitter and Facebook so they can detail their productivity.
16. Ashely and Alissa were born in Brooklyn, New York and they are fraternal twin sisters. They just graduated from Pratt Institute, majoring in Photography and Sculpture, respectively. They were interning during the Summer as assistants at a photo studio and art gallery in Soho, but they are currently working at retail stores as full time. When Ashely, who works at Think Coffee, gets off work at 5pm, she often stops by Barnes and Noble at Union Square to grab a book to read at night before she go to bed, before she hops on the subway to go home. On the crowded L train, she loves to flip through the ‘Craft’ magazine that she bought earlier. When they were in college, Ashely came across the website ‘Etsy’, a community site to buy and sell handmade crafts. Ashely and Alissa used to make handmade crafts like jewelry, hair accessories, and up-cycled clothing to sell to her friends and family. When Ashely first joined ‘Etsy’, she thought about opening a shop to sell their handmade crafts as well. It seemed pretty easy to open and operate a shop and the costs didn’t look too bad. However, when she thought about her bills and loans, it stopped her from starting a new business on their own. It simply sounded too difficult to them. The sisters didn’t have any knowledge about branding or marketing or how to manage their finances to accommodate a business. Ashely read some information from the ‘Etsy’ forums and was surprised to find that a lot of sellers have a hard time managing their shops. She was intimidated, to say the least. Ashely took a marketing class back in college as a requirement, but she slept through most of the class and she hated the fact that everything sounded too strict and business-like. She views herself as a creative person and the marketing class didn’t seem to fit her. One day, when Ashely went back to the bookstore, she start to browse through business books for crafters who want to own and manage their own shops. When she opened to the section where the legal fees are shown, she frozen for a second. She thought, if she needed this much of money just to start things up, she can’t go out with her friends every Friday night and she can’t buy the new dress that she was looking forward to getting with her next paycheck. Ashely always saying she’s broke, but she still go out every Friday with her best friends and she loves to buy new shoes, bags, and clothes. She gets regular paychecks from her job, but she feels like she’s always broke. Whenever she’s on the phone with her mom, she keep nagging her to write a spending record book, but she think that it’s outdated and she doesn’t want to carry notes around with her. Alissa think the same as well. Ashelywonders if there’s a smart phone application for her iPhone, where she can record and check her spending habits, so she can analyze her spending habits and save money for her Etsy shop and her future. She think that if she can monitor her spending habits with something that she constantly has with her and uses constantly, she can start to save some money from her paycheck. Getting inside tips and information from other crafters, then she thinks that it’s not impossible to own and manage her own handmade craft store in the future. To Ashely and Alissa, it would be awesome to own their own business, where they have the freedom to make whatever they likes and sell their crafts to people who appreciate handmade crafts.
18. 8 AM: Ashely drags her body out of her apartment to go to work. It’s the same early morning routine. She wishes to go back to bed and get some more sleep. She’s still feel tired from last night to sketching new designs for up-cycling clothes. 9 AM: She hates having to cram onto the L train in the morning. At least she is on time to work. She doesn’t want to get in trouble with her manager. 12 PM: She’s already tired from work and she burned earlier on a steamer, had to deal with a pair of rude customers, and their complicated custom coffee orders. She wishes that customers just ordered what’s on the menu. 2 PM: She feels a little better and her finger doesn’t hurt anymore. The lunch rush hour is over and she just enjoyed her own lunch. She can’t wait to get off work. 5 PM: Hooray! Ashely’s shift is finally over and she is so ready to leave. Her coworker Justin asks her to grab dinner together, but she’s not interested in him. She already has plans with Alissa. 6 PM: After her long day at work, she comes straight home and sits down in front of the computer. She kept thinking about the ‘Etsy’ site that she had visited earlier and she spends a while browsing ‘Etsy’ to see what some of the newest popular designs are. 7 PM: Ashely makes dinner for Alissa and herself and sits back down at the computer. She starts chatting with ‘Etsy’ sellers to get to know them better and she starts talking about her own dream about owning a crafting small business, but she’s not so good at handling her money.
19. 7: 30 PM: One ‘Etsy’ seller recommends an iPhone application called ‘HandyPlum’. She tells Ashely that it’s helping her to record her spending and monitor her budget. It’s free to download, easy to use and compare to other finance applications, and keep her focused on her goals, which is saving money to buy new supplies for her leather crafts. 8 PM: AshelyGoogles ‘HandyPlum’ to read reviews about it and finds out that ‘HandyPlum’ is a mobile version of its official site and provides users a spending record system along with monthly planning. It provides a community forum where crafters can share their ideas and branding and marketing tips. Eris think that the unique side of the site is you can customize your profile page (like D.I.Y project) and users can set their own goals for their dreams. 9 PM: Ashely feeds Mister Kitty and crashes on her couch to download ‘Craftpot’. She likes the fact that it’s totally free and doesn’t ask her for any personal information. When she browses other online finance sites, they want her to submit all sorts of account information and she didn’t feel comparable with it. When it finishes downloading, Ashely tests out the application. It loads fast and looks like a simplified version of its official site. Ashely likes the application, since it’s easy to enter information and the simple design is easy to navigate. 10:30 PM: Ashely just got the phone with her mom. She told her she will start to save money to open a handmade craft shop with Alissa in the upcoming months. Her mom, Karen, seems not to believe her goals, but she seems proud of her daughters ambition, because she started to worry about Ashely and Alissa a little bit since they still works at the retail stores. Ashely told her twin sister Alissa to check out the ‘HandyPlum’ application as well. Ashely think that the application will help her sister as well since Alissa wants to be part of Ashely’s plan for the future craft shop. 12:00 AM: Ashely spends quite a lot of time learning about ‘HandyPlum’ and reading more into Etsy, before it’s time to go to bed.
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22. Thank you so much. Professor Tom Klinkowstein A-Young Lee
