The Brief

Over the last few decades, the internet have been characterised by a rapid growth in the creation of digital content. Increasingly, however, users are moving away from the open web to produce content in so-called ‘walled gardens’ - applications like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok to name a few.

Having considered the above context, Google’s brief for us is to reimagine the act of content creation for the web. Our challenge is to develop a product strategy that can exist in an ecosystem that connects technologies and platforms with users and behaviours.

Empathise

The first step in our design process was to conduct secondary research into content creation: what are the current trends? Which industries are dominating the content creation market? What are the current challenges with content creation platforms? What consumer behaviours have influenced the move from web to app? 

We then gave out questionnaires to 30 Gen Z’s living in Sydney to understand their behaviours and engagement with content creation platforms. From here, we carried out a thematic analysis and created how might we statements to collate and analyse our research findings. 

Define

Through our how might we statements, we were able to reframe the brief in a direction that focuses on the travel and tourism sector. Creating a specific and compelling research question was a crucial step that helped guide our entire design process. 

Ideate

In the ideation phase, we carried out various methods to explore multiple concepts. We created extreme characters and personas to understand the needs and motivations of potential users, conducted a competitor analysis to identify gaps and opportunities in the market, and brainstormed the worst possible ideas to prompt a new way of thinking about the problem.

From here, we refined our concepts by conducting two more brainstorming sessions. 

Prototype: Sketches

We sketched out various iterations of our web platform and reviewed the pros and cons of each iteration to choose which ones to develop further. 

Prototype: Low Fidelity Prototypes

We created low-fidelity prototypes on Figma and conducted usability testing along with a think aloud session with 9 users. The insights and feedback from the user-testing were implemented into our final outcome.

The Final Outcome

One of the main features of Stories of Sydney is the ability for users to create their own travel route stories through scrollytelling. Users can either make their own route story with templates or let AI design the page theme based on what contents they upload. Another way the platform utilises AI is through creating community routes. These routes contain a collection of our users’ stories, photos and experiences through a shared theme or location. New AI generated routes are released every month, and aim to promote the community and engagement aspect of Stories of Sydney.

Stories of Sydney also features community challenges in the form of photo mosaics. Every week, a photo challenge prompt will be given for users to complete during their travels. At the end of the week, AI will collate all of these photos into a completed piece of community artwork.

As an incentive for users to generate meaningful route stories, Stories of Sydney will feature a route story each month as a Google Doodle when you open up Google Search. The featured route story will be randomised so anyone can have a chance at being discovered on Google.