lauantai 16. tammikuuta 2016

The final pitching

Hello!

On thursday was time for one of the most important milestones of this project, the final pitching.
The pitching event was in two patches, each of them had 13 teams pitching n them. There was a jury of three people, two firm spokesmen and the head of Demola Tampere Ville Korpiluoto, commenting the pitches. It was really interesting to see what the other teams had been working on and what they had accomplished. Most of the pitches were really good, especially visually.



We had chosen Jouni from our team to give our pitch. He did a very good job in explaining the journey we had been on. He explained what had been the initial idea behind the project, how we then faced reality and the constraints of 3D-modelling and photo measurement and how we then came up with alternative ideas. He also presented our current "final product" which is the website where people can find the demo for our app and all the info about us and the project.

We got some pretty good feedback on our pitch. The main feedback was that we had clearly done our research and analysed our competition, which was true. We had then created a solution that's not "reinventing the wheel" and come up with a way to differentiate ourselves from the competition. The jury thought that our branding was good and that the idea was very usable.

We were really satisfied with our pitch and the feedback we got. Now there's only the final meeting left and then it's time to wrap up this project!

Johanna

perjantai 15. tammikuuta 2016

FINALLY! Project is done!

Hi there!

It has been a while since you have heard about our project. We all been really busy with our own schools and with our Demola project.

But finally we can say that our project is done and it's been quite a journey!
Yesterday we had our Final Pitching event and it went great, more about that on the next post.

I wanted first to go through what we have accomplished during these almost five months.


We were given a task to develop a system to measure person’s strategic measurements with a mobile phone camera. This was a tall task and we dove right into it full of gusto.
We did a lot of research and found out a lot about the problem domain and market, which is huge.
Just the yearly online apparel market is hundreds of millions of dollars and there is a great need for these kind of solutions as they can potentially save a lot of work for the customer and businesses.

We found a few problems

We found that it’s possible to measure a person very precisely even with a normal camera, and there’s a lot of measuring technology developed to measure people, like full body scanners.

And here’s the but: The problems is that scanners are expensive, and mobile phone cameras or webcams are not very good tools for this because they have a very distortive lens geometry and they don’t let a lot of light trough which causes a very bad image quality in indoor conditions.
Also most image based measurement systems either rely on multiple cameras for 3D vision and lot of the aspects of the scene are constrained, like the space is know, there’s predefined markings in the room for the camera to detect or the subject to stand on and the camera is calibrated to remove the lens distortion.

And then we came up with new ideas

So we started thinking, what is our competition doing and what’s actually the easiest way we can do this?
We found out that there’s great and simple solutions in the market already.
Like just measure your existing clothing, for example your favourite dress shirt that you know fits well, and save the measurements of that in a web app, that will give you the closest match from the online store.
Or just select a piece of clothing and size from another brand that you own and the system will select a closest match based on that.
So we forgot the complex image based measuring system and took a more simple approach to the problem, after which we soon found out that, it was the exact same thing our competition had done.

Benefits

But we also realised that the competing approaches were lacking something.
They were pretty much standalone apps not very visible on the web sites.
So we decided on very universal approach that should be easy to use and very visible for the user.
It should also have some sort of hook, which we realised is a ability to make a profile and store a history and an online wardrobe which is available to be used anywhere online. A sort of portal to right size and kind of clothing.

Just the kind you want, which you never need to return again.



Text is copied from our pitch sketch so you can have a little preview how our pitch was like. 

Till the next time! :)

- Linda -







WHO WE ARE? Part 4: Heini



I'm a first year student in the University of Tampere and studying computer sciences. Previously I have studied IT and business in Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences for two years.
I like IT, sciences, innovate, music, cats and good food. I'm also interested about clothes and business. I'm a creative person. I get easily really excited and want to work right away. I also like developing, I have built a motion sensor beaver. I would like to develop and built more things. My main interest in this project is in programming and research.

I get interested about this project because I have difficulties to find right size clothes and it is even harder to buy them online. I always get wrong size clothes or they just don't fit me. It is frustrating to order something knowing that I have to return it. Or I have to order many sizes and models and try them all. It would be nice to be sure that a piece of clothes is my perfect fit. I hope that this project will abolish my problem.

torstai 19. marraskuuta 2015

4th meeting with our project partner

Hello!

We had our fourth meeting with Toni from Koutu Digital. After having faced some problems with our project, we were really happy to be able to discuss the issues and hear Toni's opinion on things. We wanted to know which way Toni wants us to go and what in his mind would be the ultimate result of the project.

Navid had done some research on two of the biggest companies on the industry and their business models. We had a long discussion about what our business model should be and how we could compete with the other solutions out there and also how we can differentiate ourselves from them. 

We had a special guest at our meeting
We showed Toni the photo measurement app as it is for now and he thought it was good. We talked about the many constraints there are concerning photo measurement, such as taking the photo, bad cameras and conditions and the fact that because of these constraints the measurements won't be very precise. Despite all of these, Toni thought that the photo measurement is still the best way to go and that we should try to develop it as much as we can. Even though the solution wouldn't be perfect at the end of this project, there's always the possibility to develop it further in the future.

We also talked about Slush, since Toni was going to present our idea for some investors there. We will propably continue our project based on the feedback he gets there.

At the end of the meeting we also decided on the name for our product: sizealize. So now it's time to get #sizealize trending on all sorts of social media!

The mid-pitching event is today, really excited to see the feedback we get there and also to see what the other teams have been working on!

Johanna


torstai 12. marraskuuta 2015

JAM #2

Hi there!

Our Demola project in now halfway through and on last Saturday (7.11.) we had our Jam number 2.

Agenda for the day was interesting, including a lecture from Heini Ala-Vannesluoma, who is working in Gofore as a crew coach. The topic of the lecture was how we can get to know our customers and users better, and which questions we should ask to get more details about what people want and need.

This really opened our eyes and we realized that we hadn't paid that much of attention to the users and customers needs before. Now we have a clear plan how we start researching and collecting feedback.

After the lecture we were divided in groups by our school programs. There every group discussed the projects and solved problems if there were some. I was in a business group and I got very good points from the others and also ideas how we should move on. Like i posted last time, we are having little problems and this Jam really helped us. I guess these Demola people know by experience when we need a new motivation and ideas :)

We also had a Pitch practise. All of us made a big circle, where pairs were standing opposite to each other and we had one minute time to pitch our projects. It was a good exercise again, teaching how to tell the most important details about the project in a way, that the other person understands the idea easily.

After the day we had a group meeting where we shared our new ideas and discussed how we implement new information into our project.

Overall, the day was exciting and we definitely got new motivation to continue our work! :)

Till the next time!



- Linda -   


sunnuntai 8. marraskuuta 2015

CROSSROAD

Hi!

It's been crazy rush few weeks and we have had couple of meetings during the weeks - some of them were good and some were not that good. I guess every team is having a crossroad - situation at some point during the project and we are facing it now.

We had a meeting with our partner Toni last week's Monday (26.10.) and after the meeting we noticed that our vision of this project differences a bit what Toni sees. Still meeting went good and Toni liked our ideas and gave us a lot of compliments. Later on Jouni sent him a video of our prototype and they had a phone discussion with Toni. Feedback were constructive and also positive. Toni is going to Slush event (http://www.slush.org/) on next week and he is about to present the app there.

We had a next meeting with the team on 4th of November and where we discussed how we are going to continue the project - in which direction. We have a few problems and that many visions as there is a team members at the moment.  Meeting had somehow cleaning effect for our team. Everyone got to say their opinion and how they see this project.






























Even this situation is quite frustrated it still is part of working in projects and I guess we are learning something from it - at least it's better to think positive!



- Linda -


keskiviikko 28. lokakuuta 2015

WHO WE ARE? Part 3: Johanna


I’m a music enthusiast, a food lover and a third year marketing student at the University of Tampere. I’m really interested in the different types of social media and in how the opportunities they offer can be exploited in the business world. I can spend hours browsing through Pinterest or Instagram, especially when I’m dodging the school work I should really be doing.

I find myself to be quite creative and someone who gets excited very easily, but often the great ideas I have go on the rocks when I realize I really don’t have the skills to put them into practice. For example I can’t draw or photograph but still I often find myself in projects where I just assume I can. I’m though very eager to learn new things and to broaden my horizon.

In this project I’m concentrated on the business side of things. I really don’t have any technological expertise and can only sit and be amazed by the way our “tech department” is taking care of things. I, on the other hand, can offer customer insight and think what the customers really want, besides the core function of the product. I'm also responsible for the posts on this blog together with Linda.

I think this project is really interesting, and it tackles the problem also familiar to me. Buying clothes online offers many benefits, but there is always the uncertainty whether the clothes will fit or not. I’m also very excited to be part of the project; to work in a team and to get to work in practice since studying in a university is very theoretical. 

"The things we are passionate about are not random, they are our calling"