Go Jauntly app: From startup idea to a movement in 6 steps
Guest Contribution
Teenagers living in London are rated as having the worst mental health wellbeing compared to the the rest of England and increasing numbers of children are now classified as obese. On top of this, 32.4% of children aged under 16 years are living in poverty. Something has to change.
These stats were among many that truly resonated with the Furthermore team. Could we use technology to inspire people to become more active and in ways that feel natural? Or could we find ways to reduce the barriers people have when going outdoors?
Motivated by the compounding science and evidence that highlighted the health and wellness benefits of walking, we embarked on our walking journey to considered new and innovative ways to get kids, their parents and friends to be more active. And so, Go Jauntly, a platform to help people discover walks, curate their own and share outdoor adventures was born.
Step 1: Researching user needs, our market and formulating a business model
Through our own desk research, concept app and experience of delivering digital health tech and wellness products for Furthermore’s clients, we concluded that walking is free, easy and fun and the health and wellness benefits are obvious, however, there is not enough being done to attract new audiences to the pastime?—?especially those in cities. We believe that existing health and lifestyle apps are either too techy, too niche or not engaging enough to resonate with the mass market.
Using evidence-based findings from potential customers we created empathy maps for each of our core user types. We then mapped their needs, wants, concerns and pain-points across the end-to-end customer journey.
We completed a brand essence workshop to ensure we spoke in a way that resonated with our target users and that our core brand values reflected what we stood for as a company.
We created a set of design hypotheses and a completed business model canvas which we then went on to ideate our features and interface ideas around. We considered potential market size, audience segmentation and various revenue models.
Step 2: Getting help
Now committed to our Go Jauntly journey and in order to make something beautiful, intuitive and craft an experience that works perfectly, we needed the right team. Luckily, we have a great product design team inhouse here but we knew that we’d need more help, so an important part of this journey was also realising our own skillset limitations and where we might need an extra pair of hands.
We worked hard to accelerate our idea internally and then in August 2016 we won Vestd’s “Ultimate Start-Up” title and received expert start-up mentoring from Jonas Altman from Social Fabric.
Joining Vestd was a pivotal moment which allowed us to call on experts in return for micro-equity, for example, when we needed legal advice around our app’s ‘terms of use’, we swapped equity with a lawyer in return for their knowledge. We also created a new company through Vestd, taking the hassle out of company incorporation.
Now gaining proper traction, we were on the look out for partners and in October 2016, it was confirmed that we won a place on Ordnance Survey’s funded accelerator programme Geovation.
Geovation provided us with a non-equity based grant, mentorship and office space in Farringdon. We used a large proportion of their grant to get our iOS development off the ground.
“We were excited to welcome Go Jauntly onto the accelerator programme because they’ve shown a really novel way of engaging consumers in healthy outdoor activities through a new and exciting consumer product. They are a really strong team with a positive start-up ethos and we really liked the way they resourced themselves through community platforms like, Vestd.”
— Alex Wrottesley, Head of Geovation
Step 3: Ideation
We used a number of techniques to formulate our early ideas. Crazy-eight sketching was used to rapidly come up with ideas, each session referring to a design hypothesis.
We used paper prototypes and stop-motion animation to see how the ideas felt as a cohesive journey before committing to any detailed design or development.
Step 4: Branding & visual identity
Through various workshops we defined Go Jauntly’s tone of voice, personality and brand values we came to a conclusion that we want the DNA of Go Jauntly to be open, encouraging, community-led and inspiring as we need to change a sedentary habit of a lifetime! Our branding aims to evoke the feeling and movement of being outdoors and in nature, surrounded by blue skies and biodiversity and the beauty that each season brings.
Step 5: UI Design & app build
Inspired by new user interface (UI) patterns and a strong desire to create something useful and beautiful, we built the visual design through layers that move at their own speed and in their own way. The users can easily swipe between walks tailored to their location. To look at a walk in more detail they swipe up. These mechanics allow users to preview walks before they head out. If you see a walk you like, you can easily save it from the cover page. Each walk is made up of a number of steps and each step is presented with a photo and description. These are little nuggets of information that could be an interesting fact, through to handy hints on where to stop for refreshments or use the loo! From any of the steps, you can flip to the map.
In parallel we started work on our first build. Version one of Go Jauntly is build on iOS using Swift and a serverless architecture which means that as we grow in user numbers our technology can scale appropriately.
Step 6: Launch!
Go Jauntly is a community based app, that also relies on user generated content so we’re currently working hard to build our community through various social channels and relevant partnerships with companies and people working towards the same thing we are?—?happiness outdoors and technology for good that has a positive social impact. Instagram and Twitter has been our main communication tools throughout this progress, with Facebook being out next step. We’ve created a content calendar full of fun social content, designed to attract a new social media audience and engage the existing. A task that shouldn’t be underestimated when going down the content-publishing platform route.
One of the most important things for Go Jauntly is the content the users have access to. So whilst designing and creating this product we also spent hours and hours outside, scoping out London for all its hidden gems and amazing places. Working outdoors and pounding the streets has some pretty good benefits.
Ok so we have slightly simplified the steps to launching an app, but hopefully this post gives you and idea of the work involved in creating one.
When you are motivated enough, anything is possible, so if you have an idea get a few friends together and start creating something special.
You can download the public beta Go Jauntly on the App Store here. We’re currently piloting in London, UK.
This insight was brought to you by the team at Furthermore, a multi-platform digital product and service design studio based in London. We have one mission: to create innovative digital products that stand out in the landscape, are beautiful, purposeful and a delight for the user. Hot on user experience and user research, we believe good ideas can come at any point in a project, so we utilise agile methodologies. Hypotheses are always tested using prototypes and real users, with improvements being constantly fed back into our user experience and visual designs. Get in touch and let’s make something great together.
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