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"

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

WHO WE ARE? Part 2: Jouni

Outside the box, finally.

The self entitled technical lead of the project. Jack of all trades and truly the master of nothing.

I tend to get excited about things fairly easily and can pour a lot of hours into them for a while, but it is also the reason why I don’t really have any long term hobbies except for “Hacking”, as I tend to jump into new interests very fast, when i’m learned enough about the thing I’m interested in. In a sense the online fitting room project fits me well, because it’s fairly fragmented and there’s no possibility to build something concise and complete, but rather gather a lot of intel on the subject and try arrange and document it into something simple and descriptive.

I build and make a lot of things, but never really finish anything or the result is not very refined, it just needs to work. Putting attention into the details doesn’t give me the same satisfaction as learning completely new stuff. I guess that’s also the reason why I have started in two universities after my graduation as a automation engineer, doing the same things over and over again is just not satisfying for me and generally all jobs consist of just that.

I study computer sciences in the University of Tampere and I’m mostly interested in user experience design. My application to the Human-Technology interaction masters program was just accepted and all the course descriptions seem very, very interesting, so I guess this is my "thing”.

I have worked in technical documentation and spare parts management for some years now and previously I was a commissioning engineer working abroad, in Eastern Europe, Middle East and South America.

And since this is the internet: I have cats!

WHO WE ARE? - Part 1: Navid

Title: Project Manager

Educational Background: B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, M.Sc. in Business & Technology

Professional Background: My main area of interest is business development in particular product development. I have been working in this field as product developer and project manager in the last two years.

Why Online Fitting Room?

Well I have two main reasons to participate in this project. I have had difficulties buying clothes online. Only thinking about the fact that you need to wait few days to few weeks to get your clothes and then the piece of clothing is not going to fit you, make me reluctant to do online clothes shopping. When I saw online fitting room project on Demola website, I got very excited. Finally, I can be part of a team to make something amazing which is going to put an end to online clothes shopping misery. Moreover, when I was working, I was mainly involved in product development of physical products. Being part of a mobile application development project could be a great opportunity for me to work in a totally different area of product development and gain invaluable experience.

Team Meeting 7.10. - Brainstorming session 2

Hello hey!

Last Wednesday it was time to have our weekly meeting again and this time we had some actual work done already! Our boys who are the technology experts had done pretty good job with making a 3D-models and even a demo of our Online Fitting Room - app.

Heini is missing from the picture.

So like I said this time we had something actual to show to each others. Next time we will have version 1 made and maybe a version 2 too!

We also shared our tasks for upcoming weeks and now everyone has a clear plan what they will do next. So overall a good meeting! So lets get to work!

- Linda - 

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