Places Left Behind Idea
The Basis:
Nowadays it seems as though people move way more often then they
did in the past. I believe the average American moves roughly five
times throughout their life. In undergoing these living situation changes
we gain both positive and negative memories of the area.
The Concept:
The thought process behind the site will correlate in some respects to
the idea of how families track the progress of their children’s height on
doors or walls within the houses they live. However for this site I want
to create a place that allows users to come and share memories, pictures
and learn the status of the places that they left behind. Instead of
tracking family progression one could now track the history of the
residence in which they used to reside.
Return Value:
Users are encouraged to return to the site after every move they
undertake to add their new living arrangements to their existing profiles.
A status indicator will be displayed on the main page showing a list of
the top twenty people who have moved the most. Not that I necessarily
want to promote people to move, but I thought it would make for an
interesting indicator. Also, the curiosity factor of what has happened to
the place they once lived hopefully will drive users to return to the site.
Spread:
In order to promote the spread of this site I will include an area that
allows users to both inform friends and to reach out to the people who
now live in the place where the user once lived. To get in touch with
the current resident the user would be able to create a printable post
card that could be sent through the mail to the new residents address.
The postcard could include an image showing the house or a room
within the house with a user created caption and a area that includes
details that inform the postcard recipient about the website. This would
hopefully generate enough interest in the recipient to go to the site and
see what it’s all about and potentially starting the process all over again.
The downside of this is that it would rely heavily on the user to actively
partake in this process and fork out the price of a stamp. An idea to
overcome this would possibly be some kind of stamp credit system that
if the user added enough content to the site they would be rewarded by
getting compensation for the stamps. Unfortunately, being a poor
college student I will probably not include this feature, but if the site
was to become successful enough with out the system in place the cost
could always be offset with some form of on site advertising.