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 -   

Meeting on 21.10.

Hi all!

On Wednesday we had our traditional weekly meeting. On the previous week we hadn't had a meeting, so it had been two weeks since we had last seen each other. That's why we had a lot of catching up to do and eveyone was excited to see what the others had been up to.

Everyone gave presentations about the work they had done. Jouni had worked with InVision to create an interactive protoype for the UI of our app. We were all really impressed with the work he had done, the UI seemed clear and easy to use, and it included all the features we had talked about.

Navid had looked into the possibility of creating a wide database of different brands and their sizes and then using algorithms to find fitting clothes.  He had created a small database as an example, but had faced some problems and it seemed clear that creating a database like that isn't as simple as it might seem. Navid was though eager to look more into it.

Michal as our techncial genious had been creating the actual desktopp app for measuring from photos. It looked great and we were excited to get to test the app in practise. Also Heini had done some coding that could benefit us in our project.

Meanwhile Linda and I had been focusing on the more creative side of things and had been thinking about the visual look and design of the app.

After everyone had shared their work and thoughts we then had some discussions in pairs based on our areas of expertise. Me and Linda talked about the social features the app could have and sketched the layout of the user's profile page. Heini and Michal had a discussion about the coding, which I couldn't understand even if I tried, and Jouni and Navid talked about the project in general and how we want to proceed and organize things from now on. After this we discussed together and came to the conclusion that we also have to start thinking more about the business side of things, and for example think about the branding of our product.

All in all I think this was one of our best meetings and it feels like the pieces are starting to come together! We are meeting with our project partner on Monday, so we are eager to show our work to Toni and hear his thoughts.


Till next time!

Johanna

The Playbook meeting 5.10.

Hi guys!

On the monday after the first Jam we had our playbook meeting with our project partner Toni and facilitator Aino. We had filled up our playbook and returned it in beforehand.

In the meeting there were 20 questions about our project and our team, and each of us got to pick 4 or 5 of them and then answer them in turns. There were questions such as "What is your success criteria?" "What could prevent you from succeeding?" or "How do you communicate within the team?". It was nice that all of us got to answer the questions so you were able to see what everyones' thoughts were and if we were on the same page. Toni also commented and shared his thoughts on our answers.

After the questions Navid gave a short presentation about what we had been working on; the research we had done and how we had planned to move ahead. Toni was quite satisfied with our work and there were some specific ideas he thought were really good and interesting.

We then had a discussion about the general stage of the project. We discussed some of the obstacles and problems we had faced and how to overcome them. We also talked about what we should do next and what Toni excpects to see from us in the next meeting.

Since our project partner seemed satisfied with the direction we had taken we felt quite confident with our project and are eager to carry on!

-Johanna

Jam #1

Hello!

On saturday the 3rd of October was time for our first Jam. We weren’t quite sure what to expect from the day, but we knew that the day was about workshops and getting some tools to proceed with our project. The day started with a breakfast so after that everyone was full of energy and ready for the day ahead.

The first subject was the ”löylykauha”. Ville told us about how every item or service can be divided  into attributes, values and into ”something in between”. We all had to pick an item from everyday life and apply the löylykauha concept into it. For example a teamug can have attributes such as its size, that it keeps the drink warm but isn’t too hot on the outside, and that it has a handle that is easy to get a grip on. These attributes can then be combined to concepts such as functionality and design. These then lead to the value that they provide such as comfort, quality of life, relaxtion or social value. After this we had to apply the same exercise for our own project.

The next task was shitty prototyping. We had about an half an hour to create a shitty prototype of our project. It is important to be able to summarize the idea of the project into something concrete that is then easy to present to everyone. We decided to leave the crafting and taping to others and built our prototype by drawing.

After this was time for the highlight of the day aka lunch. The food was so good!

After lunch we were divided into teams and it was time to play Sherlock Holmes for a while. We had to create a crime scene and a backstory and then solve the mystery on another team’s crime scene based on clues. The aim of this exercise was to understand the importance of story telling when trying to convince someone on something.

The last activity of the day was to create personas for the end-users of our product. We came up with four different personas who could possibly use our app and invented a backstories for them. We thought of the attributes and reasons why they would and wouldn’t use our product.

The day all in all was quite long but also quite fun. It was nice to be active, work in teams, use your creativity and get ideas flowing. We came up with a lot of stuff we can use later on in our project, for example the user personas and the ”löylykauha” of our project.

We are ready for the challenges ahead!

-Johanna

Team Meeting 1.10. - Brainstorming

Hi again!

We had a team meeting after a Value Creation workshop and now we one step ahead again!

Our team has a Facebook group and we are posting actively there our ideas, website links and some demos.  We thought that it would be easier for us if everyone would make a short presentation where to tell own ideas and vision what kind of our ready app would look and be like.

Everyone had many many ideas and we collected all together. Now we have visions of what features we want to have on this app. We will keep our secrets safe still a while :) After few weeks I'm sure we have already something to show you!

After a meeting it felt like that we are on the right track! Our great project manager Navid promised to make a PowerPoint presentation for a next meeting with Toni Koutu.

We also decided to have weekly meetings in every Wednesday at 16:00 in New Factory. Everyone has so full calendars so it got really frustrating to try to find a suitable days and times for all.
... And now you know where to find us, if you want to come check it out what we are working on at the moment! We also would like to hear your ideas if you got some :)

Till the next time!

- Linda -

Value Creation Workshop 1.10.

Hi all!

It's been awhile since last time but we are still working hard :)

We had a Value Creation Workshop on last week's Thursday and we got lot of new tricks from there. Agenda of the day was to learn how to have a good pitch. First we heard how and then we had to present one!

The facilitators gave us fifteen minutes to sketch our own pitch about our projects. Pitch model is quite simple: First hook the audience with a question they can answer, let them imagine a need for your product and let them see themselves using it. So sell the idea and close your pitch with an interest - either your interest of them by asking a question or ask them to come talk with you because you think your audience could help you to develop the product even better. Good ending could also be a suggestion to visit your website or blog site.
It really sounds simple, but how to do it in one minute?

So when the fifteen minutes was passed it was the Pitch time. We were total of 40 in workshop that day and everyone had to present their pitches individually in one minute - challenge accepted!

Almost everyone of our group was sitting in a front and we were almost first ones who had to go on the stage and pitch our Online Fitting Room - project in very short time. Our team did good and everyone was able to stay on time.  Speaking on microphone and standing front of 40 random people made it little more challenging not to forgetting the feedback that everyone got after their speech. All the time two persons in the audience had a either green or red shovel in their hands. Red shovel meant that you have to give constructive feedback and with the green one you gave positive feedback. Giving a feedback is also really hard, especially for people who you don't know that well, so that is a good thing to practise as well.

We also videotaped all of our speeches that we can follow our improvement. Maybe at some point we could have some material in our blog too - so stay tuned !

- Linda -

Meeting with Koutu Digital

We had our first meeting with the company we are working for this project on 16.9.2015. Meeting went really well and owner is really nice.
The company we are working for is called Koutu Digital. Owner Toni Koutu was easy to talk with and he gave us a freedom to use our ideas and imagination.

We also got more clear picture of our project and what we are expected to do. Here is what our project is a about:

The brief
The cameras in modern mobile phones or a portable devices are capable to do many tasks. One example of a useful, modern way for using a camera would be to take measures of a target person and help selecting the suitable clothes!

The background
Koutu Digital is a Start-up company specialized in digitalization and project management. Koutu Digital aims to draft new, potential products by using Demola projects as a tool for this. One interesting product domain would definitely be online shopping and using mobile camera for this purpose.

The problem
The goal of the project is to create an app for selecting clothes. This should be done by using a mobile camera or a portable devices (IOS, Android, Windows) and image-processing solution to turn the picture(s) into clothing measures and sizes. In between these two, probably a 3D picture would be needed. The project should start with a market survey, as there might already be some interesting solutions done – and the result of this project should be somewhat complementary.

More information: http://tampere.demola.net/projects/online-fitting-room

- Linda - 

Demola Kick Off

It was been a week from the email which told us that we have been accepted in Demola Project Online Fitting Room when we had the first Kick Off meeting on 15.9.2015. 

When everyone finally found their way to New Factory office we got warm welcome and some information of Demola company from our new facilitators. Building and office are really impressive and atmosphere is totally different than usual office mood. It is youngish and trendy. Brick walls, big spacious room with lot of tables and cozy chairs and several old windows made the room very cool.  

Room was very full, I believe there was more than hundred people listening and waiting when we all get to meet our teams. 

Then after a while we were divided to our groups and they gave us a task. Task was to build a "tower" as high as we can with spaghetti. Only tool we got was tape. And of course there was a little twist: in top of that "tower" we needed to stick marshmallow through spaghetti so it needed to be strong enough to hold the candy.  

During building our tower we got to know our teams a bit too. Soon we learned that Jouni has fast brains and he made a quick sketch how we should tape our spaghettis together. Michael was maybe only one who understood Jouni's idea and he started to help him. We girls (Linda, Heini and Johanna) and Navid shared our amazed faces to each other every now and then and tried to keep up while boys were working. It was maybe better that we were spending time to getting to know us more (because when I tried to do something I managed only breaking spaghettis). We have a lot of different skills in our team and we all are excited about this project. It was also cool to have two exchange students in our team and good balance with boys and girls. 

There was an another very good reason too why it was better to let Michael and Jouni do the hard work. Our team WON! Our tower was 93 cm high and it was the highest!! WoopWoop! Now we are waiting to get this project started!

- Linda -