prototyping

The V Word

‘The V Word’ is a series of blog posts and YouTube Videos and is focused on vegan food, products, experiences and resources. My DA aims to adopt a carefree approach to veganism in order to help individuals learn more about the diet and where to start if they are interested in trying it out! My goal is to make content that is helpful for those who are struggling to understand or successfully maintain the lifestyle. 

During the prototyping stage, I have focused on turning my ideas into tangible content and learning from the feedback I have received and the mistakes I have made.

So far I have created:

• a blog post on the best vegan/cruelty free beauty products
• my first blog post in my ‘the vegan experience series’
• a youtube video taste testing/recommending the best vegan junk food
• a youtube video reviewing a vegan burger alternative
• the second blog post in my ‘the vegan experience’ series

I have received minimal, but positive feedback on these posts. This feedback has been through Twitter, WordPress and Youtube, and has mainly been recommendations on what I could include in my posts and also resources that I would find helpful. I have also received words of encouragement and interest in my upcoming posts.

Through the prototyping stage I have realised the importance of content curation. In order for my content to do well, I must look to other vegan content and analyse their level of engagement and success. By basing my work off the feedback of others, I will be able to create posts that include elements that these audiences are looking for.

Also, through this process, I have made the mistake of solely having BCM114 students as my audience. I have been focused on their feedback and have yet to promote my content to other members of the general public. I have restricted myself from gaining a wider audience by only focusing on the interests of my fellow students.

Similarly, the content I have prototyped has been mainly targeted to those who are already vegan, Although my content aims to educated and help those who aren’t vegan, audience members would not be able to tell from the way I title and promote it. I have had feedback from some non-vegans saying that my DA has been of interest to them. However, I still need to find a way to make my content more obviously inclusive of both vegans and non-vegans.

Through testing and then observing my content and audience interaction, I was able to acknowledge that engaging with my audience through Twitter replies and polls was a great way to increase interaction and create content that my audience is actually interested in.

By prototyping my ideas I have found that Youtube videos and blog posts are the most effective platforms to post my content on. Although I have received little feedback, it has been enough to help me establish the basis of my content. Most of my audience seems to enjoy the food and real life experiences of veganism and I will therefore continue to base my posts around these elements.