Can I kick it?

By Axel Nilsson February 18, 2018 Edition CHIC 2017-2018Discover Flowlin project

In order to prepare the Kick off week-end our team tried to meet although some of the members had enjoyed their free time away from School in their home country.

In order to work on the project we had to dust off some parts of the project that had been waiting since the intense end of the first semester followed by Christmas and the exam period of respectively ECAL, UNIL and EPFL.

Actually, we had done some “Solution interviews” after Christmas and we could use a lot of the feedback that the potential customers had given us but we hadn’t really gone through all of the content before preparing for the Kick Off. Our designer managed to make a maquette and our engineers investigated different solutions to the problems we thought that we would face. With these new inputs, we made the slide deck that would introduce our concept product to the other teams and supervisors.

 

First of all, the weekend gave us an occasion to get updated the other team’s projects as well as meeting the Geneva and Fribourg Teams. But this was a small feat compared to the excellent feedback that specialists in several domains provided us on our project, giving us the opportunity to discuss with them features, perspectives and future challenges for the project.

 

After their insight and team reflections on the project we formulated our Main Valuable Product (MVP) such as: “A versatile device that reduces distractions and signals your physical availability”

Not bad? Well in fact, the device as we thought it now will activate a software that will block Urls, domains and apps on the computer while showing to your coworkers that your are unavailable and for how long.

 

We now have a clearer view of our intentions with the projects and we have many trails to follow to improve the current concept product

One of the main question remains for the following weeks: We still discuss different options to optimize the visibility of the timer, both for the costumer and his/her coworker

 

We have to chose wisely and quickly because the selected design will influence the way of using the device (scenario). This will eventually radically change the technical requirements and the size and shape of the object.

Our team decided to test both options we had to face by doing quickly two prototypes to test our MVP assumptions. With the feedback we will receive, we will be able to select, adapt and improve the proposed design accordingly. Those steps are really important because they will help the team to create a strong, coherent and sellable product. Finally as Alex W. said during the weekend, our objective is to make something people want.