Dear CHIC community!
As the next Milestones arrives on May 4th the past week challenged us to take some decisions and further initiatives.
The conundrum we have been facing since the beginning of the semester can be summarized as one question which was invariably asked at every meeting: ‘So, guys, are we having the object on the desk or the screen?’.
The answer is not a straightforward one as one could imagine because changing the position of the object changes the way that the user interacts with the object hence changing the customer journey map, the potential clients and further underlying assumptions.
We have been trying to use the design approach to answer this question but sometimes it felt difficult to take in the feedback. Whether the problem was the sparsity of subjects for each prototype or that we didn’t agree with some of the comments, it was only for the last generation of prototypes that we could eventually decide on the position of the object.
In the end, we have come to the conclusion that… Come to see us at the next milestone to find out!
Moreover we have some nice engineering on the backburner. Kevin, who is currently navigating through the possibilities for enabling the connection between the device and the computer found a small hack that could turn out to be a nice feature for the product. Influencing the parameters of the settings of an iPhone is close to impossible, Apple isn’t famous for opening their systems and this has been a reason why we weren’t necessarily planning a mobile app. BUT if a ‘car’ connects via bluetooth to your iPhone, then the ‘car’ can actually trigger a setting change! This is a good news for us, if we are able to make the iPhone believe that our product is indeed, a car.
Last but not least, we are trying to push the mechanical conception of the object further in order to have an almost-ready-to-produce concept very soon.Furtermore we have the opportunity to conduct some experiments in professional open spaces, namely the library of the Rolex Learning Center, and we’ll take that up as soon as we can give them a more advanced prototype.
Stay tuned for more!
Your CHIRCLE – Team