Digital Business Card, Research - OUGD603

Why A Digital Business Card is the way forward? 

It is suggested that 88% of the networking we do is a waste of time because that's the percentage of business cards that get thrown away after one week. This is such a big problem on the environment and the effort people put into networking at events and making contacts and the vast majority is doing absolutely nothing for the individual who's producing them. This isn’t even to mention the time and money that goes into business card design and the cost of card printing. The solution would be a  digital business card.

The Reason Why Traditional Business Cards are Failing?

Technology has rapidly increased however business cards have been around since the 17th century meaning they're quite a challenge to take on. Business cards are so ingrained in our image of what doing business looks like it can be hard to imagine what a world without them would be.

The Problem is, that the way we connect with each other is changing. It's is almost impossible that how we use business cards will stay the same. 

The main problem with a traditional business card is that they largely don’t work for their intended purpose. As stated above 88% of business cards are thrown out within a week, meaning it doesn't even matter how well designed or produced the card  

Harrison and I are pretty concerned that 88% of business cards are thrown away within a week. It doesn’t matter how much effort that went into the design or production that’s still the number we are are working with. 

Primary Research:

We started the primary research by asking fellow peers in the class about what they think about traditional business cards and why they're failing. The biggest concern that came up was that most people didn't need the service that was being provided. however, this didn't mean they didn't like the person or their work they just didn't need what they were offering at the time. 

The general feedback was mainly positive about creating a digital business card just purely because of simple of matter, that is it doesn't take up space and that it doesn't need to be put away in a wallet. However, because this was done in a graphic design classroom we thought that the information could have been a little bit biased. This meant that we had to create an online questionnaire which will be sent out on social media to get a better understanding of what people think.

We decided to discuss together the research that we have currently gathered from the fellow peers in the class and how will a digital business card solve this problem. As from previous research, we gathered that a huge percentage of business cards are thrown away, a digital card will more likely last longer and not be immediately deleted as they may need to contact you if they need a product or service at a later stage.  

Even though 88% of cards are thrown away within a week doesn't mean that the 12% that do keep your business card will ever contact you.