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Frugal Force - an online community 

Disclipline

Duration

Team

Anshika Saxena, Hana Chung, Sharadhi Raghuraj, and Sharvari Bondre

Idea Generation, User Research, and Interaction Design

January’22 to April’22 (15 weeks)

Online communities are central to how we work, play, learn, protest, socialize, and more. But why are some successful and why do some fail?  Through this course and project, we gained an understanding of social science concepts, and theories such as identity and self-presentation and some principles of designing online communities, and will practice applying them in a variety of online contexts.

At the intersection of DIY and frugality, Frugal Force seeks to embolden its users' creative power while maximizing their budget. Beyond this, Frugal Force is motivated by the understanding that each user will have individual needs regarding their living situation. Some users may rent, some may have pets, and some might just want to unclog a toilet! Frugal Force enables these people to ask direct questions and receive help from other people in the community who may have tackled similar projects. 

Driving to Frugal Force

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Interviews

As a part of our design process, we conducted informal interviews with various students around the campus to understand their interests and perspective towards DIY, home decor, etc.  These interviews gave us clear insights on sketching our design focus areas to define features of Frugal force.

Participant 1

“I like using IKEA because I can do DIY. I also use Amazon. Likes IKEA in person because I had a bad experience with online shopping.”

Participant 2

“I don't want to spend a lot of money on the house as it's temporary.”

Participant 3

"Looking for specific appliance related videos is at times challenging though . I wish I had more customized solutions.”

Participant 4

“If I had all the tools, I would look for help on YouTube, otherwise, what’s the point?”

Affinity Mapping

After conducting the interviews, we annotated the notes based on them through mapping on the affinity wall. We further grouped them based on similarity with respect to likes and dislikes about DIY and current platform offerings. The affinity map on the right represents our findings for further generation of personas and scenarios.

Personas & Scenarios

Direct Competitor

  • Users can view and post DIY projects as well as ask questions.

  • Impressive projects on Home talk are featured on the Homepage, which acts as a “guidebook” for users seeking to explore projects.

  • Implements community guidelines during onboarding so that users are all on the same page about expectations and behavior. 

  • Enables more methods of interactions such as upvoting, comments on relevance, and sending direct messages. 

Indirect Competitor

  • Users can share, like, and save posts to various “boards.”

  • The content on Pint’s platform is very rich and has a lot of videos in the area that our project focuses on.

  • Engage with the creator of the content for more information through the comments section.

Gaps that Frugal Force is trying to fill....

  • Algorithmic approach to avoid plagiarism of the posts and maintains authentication of the user on the platform.

  • The moderators would also implement stages of new content moderation to maintain the creator’s  original content.

Parallel Competitor

  • Primarily function as places for users to share their projects and ask questions.

  • Reddit is anonymous, which mitigates some concerns regarding privacy and may enhance community interaction.

Competitive Analysis

  • Enhanced visual designs for better communication and differentiation between content.

  • The feature to add relevant tags to the post while posting, would help the user filter and look for the accurate ones easily.

  • Hosting challenges as community events

Analogous Competitor

  • An engaged community with a beautiful-looking website with different sections for home and house-related activities, from budgeting to cleaning and organizing.

  • An engaging set of thoughtfully curated articles on expert advice about the aspects of living,

  • Providing customized solutions and one-on-one help through the platform directly from the creators.

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Frugal Force is intended for everyone and anyone who is interested in creative DIY projects and quick fixes for various maintenance issues. 

What is Frugal Force?

Flex your creative muscles both visually and functionally through Frugal Force. You can find inspiration as well as show off your work through ‘challenges’

Creative

They are designed for budget-conscious people with limited access to professional help for their creative homes.

Budget Consious

Frugal Force can act as both an asynchronous and synchronous help center. Those who are interested in being self-reliant may seek Frugal Force for help.

Self-Reliance

Frugal Force provides area specialists with a specific platform to share their expertise. It allows specialists to connect with a community that is already defined by those interested in the craft.

Altruistic Goals/Area Specialists

Core Values of Frugal Force

Find what you need on Frugal Force!

  • The users get to explore from the lists of posts and pick the most relevant as per their needs.

  • Users can look for inspiration and also learn through community building on Frugal Force.

Have a new idea, post on Frugal Force?

​FrugalForce lets you showcase your creative side by posting your ideas. The community provides a platform for the users to post their creativity and also connect with the content creators!

Frugal Force has a ton of exciting MVP features that will keep users engaged with the application by posting, commenting, and browsing. Users get a chance to win gift cards if they win these challenges.​

Encouragement of participation and contribution

Getting and retaining new users in subsequent months

Once we have a good enough user base, the community will grow organically through the posts created by these users which can be in the form of questions or as a way to showcase their home-improvement projects. We also have a feature that encourages Frugal Force users to participate in home-improvement challenges.

Common identity rule by enabling people to develop a stronger connection with DIY hacks and benefit from them. The bond-based theory could also be applied in instances where people are motivated to follow a person with particular expertise in a certain field. The direct messaging feature of our platform also strengthens the bond between people when they share their DIY ideas and develop personal relationships. 

Exploring new Identity rules

Visioning the Business Model of Frugal Force

Product Endorsements

Frugal Force creates a unique space for individuals to explore products that act as resources to explore creative projects and essentials they might need as efficient homeowners or renters. With all these commodities being talked about, the platform creates an excellent opportunity for the experts in the media to endorse products they believe in.

We took inspiration for our business model from influencer marketing on platforms such as Instagram. Users who have reached the profile level of experts can leverage this model to cut a commission on purchases made through the platform. In addition to this, the platform will also get a small share of the profit. 

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We also plan to get companies like IKEA, Target, and HomeDepot to onboard with us as sponsors for challenges we plan to host on the platform. These challenges will be a great place for these companies to showcase their products and encourage Frugal Force users to try them out.

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Gauging Success Matrix

The main success measure would be to:

Our community has significantly impacted DIY enthusiasts by providing timely, budget-friendly fixes and fostering encouragement among members. Upvotes on posts/comments and increased user engagement further highlight the positive influence of the platform.

Positive Impact on Community

Roping in local businesses to promote their products, success criteria, in this case, is measured by the growth of their brand identity and the upward trend of their sales. 

Promoting Local Businesses 

Subscribing to the content created by the user’s favorite field experts would measure the success with the count of the number generated in itself.

Adding Subscribers

Gaining Profits

We analyze the profit gained by experts who promote DIY products through promo codes. This involves tracking the number of users who use the promo code links recommended by experts to purchase products and correlating it with the generated profit.

Ethical Reflections

Social comparison can positively inspire through transcendence, revealing new possibilities. By sharing tutorials and tips, users inspire each other creatively. Alongside the community goal of knowledge sharing, transparency about product costs helps mitigate social comparison.

Social Comparison

Systems with social translucence exhibit visibility, awareness, and accountability. Supporting social translucence is intertwined with combating social comparison. While upvotes help users assess tutorial usefulness, they may also foster comparison and competition.

Social Translucence

To combat unintentional slips, Frugal Force builds in some intentional friction and granular anonymity.   When signing up for Frugal Force initially, users are not required to use their real names.

Privacy

DIY tutorial efficacy varies depending on the issue, and accuracy isn't solely based on objective perception. Frugal Force allows users to comment on tutorials, enabling them to share their experiences and address any difficulties or inaccuracies encountered.

Misinformation

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