Hacienda Bandito
Overview
Bandito Studios was launched in 2010 by company founder and CEO, Rick Villa. Its primary focus was to provide a foundation for Rick’s growing list of intellectual properties, consisting primarily of comic books. Over the years, Bandito Studios has expanded to include strategic consulting services in a variety of areas, including production, distribution, licensing, and intellectual property management.
Now, Rick dreams of igniting a transformation.
Rick approached us to help him re-imagine his business, drawing primary inspiration from “The Bandito”, a beloved character that he developed with artist David Lozeau. Since Bandito’s birth, the character has captured the interest of a diverse audience, including artists, bikers, and tattoo enthusiasts to name a few - an unexpected but delightful surprise. Rick hoped to use the momentum of “The Bandito” to ignite the transformation of Bandito Studios.
Project Objectives
Create preliminary proof-of-concept for an online community in-line with the Bandito brand.
Timeline
3 weeks
2024
Role
UX Designer and Researcher.
In a team of 2 UX designers, I was responsible for exploratory research, and defining brand & product vision and strategy.
Deliverables
Initial conception of the vision and strategy for the Bandito community and brand.
The absence of a unified platform for creatives to converge and connect is deeply felt.
Rick’s primary objective for Bandito brand’s transformation was to create an online community that would 1. provide opportunities to meet like-minded people, and 2. help people build their presence for opportunities for the Bandito Studios brand.
Upon reviewing current online creative communities, we identified some pervasive problems throughout many.
Problem: The absence of a unified platform for creatives to converge and connect is deeply felt. This void is further complicated by:
Lack of genuine reciprocity and interaction on online platforms. Algorithm-driver environments and emphasis on engagement metrics encourage quantity and competition over collaboration and mutual support.
Polarized views on AI-produced content, which can pit traditional creatives against potentially exploitative practices that diminish their trust in sharing their work on public platforms.
The daunting journey from a raw idea to a polished, professional-quality piece of work.
Exploratory Research
The nebulous nature of the project was both a challenge and an opportunity. The team kicked off the project by setting out to explore:
1. Potential ideas of what the Bandito community could be.
2. The people that the community would serve.
Community, Publishing, and Collaboration
To deepen our understanding of various subjects, we delved into research on communities, publishing, and collaborative work ; topics that we thought would be relevant to solving the challenge at hand.
Sources:
Positive Psychology | The Survey Center on American Life | Vox | Primary research questionnaire
Sources:
The Author’s Guild | Publisher’s Weekly | Wordsrated (1)
| Wordsrated (2)
| SelfPublishingUS
Sources:
Fast Company | Psychological Science
Market Scan
We examined existing art and writing social platforms to uncover potential market gaps and to find opportunities where the Bandito community can stand out.
Within a crowded sea of social platforms, we discovered that there was a lack of a platform that 1. prioritizes developing collaboration between creatives, and 2. provides professional resources, guidance, and mentorship within the comics industry.
But more so, there was a lack of potentially the greatest resource that was left untapped: Rick and his unique background and expertise.
So, how could Rick with his expertise in comics writing, licensing and distribution, answer such needs within the Bandito community?
This was the question we kept in the forefront as we marinated ideas.
Proto-Personas:
Whom the Bandito community serves
A community doesn’t exist without its members. To determine whom our potential audience may be, within the limited timeframe, we spoke with 3 individuals across different creative industries and researched the responsibilities of professionals in the comics and publishing industries. We then created three proto-personas to better understand their pain points and needs. We kept these personas in mind as we continued to explore opportunities for the Bandito community.
Our proto personas include:
1. Lucia, an art & design student in university.
2. Carl, a freelance writer and comics fan.
2. Sloane, a literary agent.
Journey Map
At this stage, we also produced a journey map which outlined a user’s journey from initial discovery of, through integration into, the online Bandito community. This helped us identify anticipated pain points, generate how-might-we statements to reframe the pain points into opportunities, and ideate “big ideas” that may answer the how-might-we statements.
We organized findings from the journey map into categories and identified several key themes. They include:
Hacienda Bandito:
Vision & Strategy
Drawing from the insights gathered from our research, the team introduced a proposal for the online community to Rick:
Hacienda Bandito seeks to embody the spirit of the collective, where creatives of all skills and backgrounds unite to share and admire creative work, trade ideas, and encourage mutual growth. In this virtual “town-like” setting, members can expect to find:
✶ Collections of visual art and writing produced by a diverse community of creatives - BIPOC creators and those of marginalized identities that include sexuality, gender identity, and disability.
✶ Guidance from fellow community members as well as mentors to help members improve their skills, and to transform visions into reality.
✶ Both creative and business (trademark and copyright, IP, licensing, legal, marketing) resources to help creatives navigate an often confusing and challenging professional landscape.
From present to future:
short-term, medium-term, & long-term visions
Before Rick could dive into building an online platform, we recognized that a preliminary foundation needed to be established first.
To help Rick envision the business he aims to build, we outlined a summary of short-term, middle term, and long-term goals for the Bandito brand. We also understood that the main focus, and also Rick’s main challenge, was on finding a way for Rick to start with minimal overhead costs. We kept this in mind while developing the vision and strategy:
Journey through Hancienda Bandito
The team proposed a refined journey map of Hacienda Bandito, highlighting major opportunities and considerations for revenue throughout each stage.
We enlisted one of our proto-personas, Carl, to walk through the journey map and detailed his experiences within the community.
Validation
The team presented our vision for Hacienda Bandito to a panel of reviewers that consisted of friends and colleagues from Rick’s expansive professional career. All were eager to see Rick take his ideas with Bandito and evolve his business.
The feedback we received shone light on areas of our proposal that were strong, as well as on areas that needed further consideration.
Next Steps
Keeping the feedback we received in mind, we looked towards next steps to take to further refine our strategy in developing Hacidenda Bandito and the Bandito brand. These include:
✦ The Man & The Brand:
-Explore ways to combine Rick’s background and expertise with the narrative/spirit of Bandito to create unique value for the brand & business.
(eg: content of behind-the-scenes process of creating, publishing, and distributing comics.)
✦ Define differentiators & deep dive into 3 potential core ideas:
-Collaboration between members (eg: connecting writers and artists)
-Mentorship process: developing how mentorship will operate.
-Professional opportunities: introducing professional opportunities and connecting users with them.
✦ Identify opportunities for revenue:
-Determine immediate steps that the Bandito brand can take to begin building an audience, with minimal overhead costs.
✦ Explore usage policies around AI-generated content on the Hacienda Bandito platform.
Reflections
Pretty on paper; messy in practice:
One the biggest challenges I faced in this project was trying to put forth ideas to meet an overall goal while also keeping in mind the very real limitations in resources (time, energy, money, etc.). For instance, its easy to recommend that our stakeholder, Rick do xyz and eventually build & maintain an online community, but I would also need to consider the overhead costs of really executing such a plan and building such a community: How much time does Rick as an individual have to do all of this? What would it cost him to run and maintain this business, and what are the practical, initial steps that he can take if he doesn’t have all the resources now? Who are other people that need to be involved to make this vision possible? In the exploratory phase of a project such as this, it can be easy to miss the trees for the forest.
So, when executing plans and ideas in real life, its imperative to be flexible in adapting and evolving one’s ideas and strategy to address the challenges that will inevitably occur when one is taking action.