Fun and easy way to learn digital marketing.
Learn digital marketing by doing digital marketing is the most effective way. We created a sandbox digital marketing environment for the user to get started without taking their brands’ reputation at risk or any marketing budget.
My Role
In this startup, I was the designer of user experience and system logic. I also managed the business operation of the company.
For business operation, I oversaw the business outreach, business pitching and handled all the business negotiation.
System Design
Digital Marketing is always my passion as I enjoy the feeling of selling things online with precise analytics data.
I started doing side projects and freelance digital marketing since I was doing my third-year study of my undergrad. I was involved in CPA, CPC ads and also gained experience in social media marketing from my last startup journey. I also created serval blackhat marketing projects for some quick money.
Based on my experience, I designed the system’s algorithm for creating a simulated sandbox environment. I have consulted digital marketers from local and overseas to further improve the user experience during the design process.
The system experience is built to emulate Facebook and Google Ads experience but more straightforward. Take the Facebook module as an example. I have abstracted the interface and created a more simple interaction for users to a quick start.
Mechanism
The product design is in form of small mission where users could complete in around half an hour for each the module. This allow institutional users to include our solution during their classes.
The sandbox learning game is based on taking turn game design, and one round will be emulated as one week in reality. To encourage the user to spend their budget wisely in the future, the system will allocate a certain amount of ad budget to the user. Design Effort for the task is quantified as Man Powerpoints, and users will need to spend the points creating different types of social media posts. The formats include video posts, viral posts with different calls to action.
Google Ads simulation is with a similar structure but dedicated to the experience for Google Ads.
Feedback is the key to learning.
We created an intelligent teaching assistant which will help guide us through the entire process. It will provide a walkthrough of the whole application and provide feedback based on the user’s current performance.
The performance analysis is based on three different metrics: the options users select, the current performance level (For Facebook, it will be like, share and comment numbers) and how they interact with the system (i.e., the attention duration by heat map data). If the player is doing well, the assistant will encourage the user. If the player is doing not so well, the assistant will try to address the issue they are potentially facing and suggest.
Team
Tech Stack
Backend: Ruby on Rails
Frontend: React
Styling: Material UI
Achievement
This project is supported by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s MicroFund and then admitted into Hong Kong Cyberport’s incubation program.
Our solution was adopted in different scenarios, including tertiary education institutions such as Hong Kong Polytechnic University and corporate training for labor unions such as the Federation of Hong Kong and Kowloon Labour Unions.
The product is being showcased in multiple learning conferences, including reimagine education conference in Philadelphia, US, and The European Conference on Games Based Learning in Nice, France. The system was also studied by a professor from the university as a publication.
Publication
The publication regarding our product - Lui, R. W., & Au, C. H. (2017, December). Designing simulation games for information systems education—A case study in teaching for digital marketing. In 2017 IEEE 6th International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) (pp. 290-295). IEEE.
Awards
- Incubatee of Hong Kong Cyberport Incubation Program (CPIP)
- Champion, Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Hong Kong
- 1st runner up International ICT Innovative Services Awards 2018 (InnoServe Awards 2018)
- 2nd runner up, Educational Games Competition, The European Conference on Games Based Learning, 2018
- First Class Award, China Pan-Pearl River Delta Region IT Project Competition 2018
- Incubatee of PolyU Micro Fund
- Winner of Student Project Management Awards 2017 from Hong Kong Project Management Institute Hong Kong Chapter
- Showcased in Reimagine Education hosted by QS in Philadelphia, United States
- Showcased in The European Conference on Games Based Learning in Nice, France
- Best Capstone Project 2017 in Department of Computing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Media Exposure
HKEJ StartupBeat - 教你用關鍵字Google賣廣告 EdTech遊戲學fb營銷
HKET - 【創業兵團】模擬fb Google賣廣告 90後創軟件掌營銷大計 - 香港經濟日報 - 即時新聞頻道 - 商業 - D190418
HK PolyU COMP - COMP graduates won First Class Award in China Pan-Pearl River Delta Region IT Project Competition 2018
