CORE

Our trip in China takes place in two differents cities: first Shenzhen and then Hong Kong. And as one is located at the border of main China and the other one is a somewhat independent state, there are a few contrasts that manifest themselves in many areas. The key aspect one which we concentrated ourselves is architecture and urban planning, because it says a lot about the system, while also having a big influence on it. Architecture reveals a lot about the politics, culture and general situation of its country, or system in this case, as we will see how the “one country, two systems” program impacts the life of their citizens and its constructions.

The city of Shenzhen is considered to be one of the fastest growing city of the world in all of human history. Due to industrialisation and the creation of a special economic zone at the end of the last century, this place started to grow very fast in the last thirty years. Becoming part of the Greater Bay initiative, the city of Shenzhen turned from Hong Kong’s backdoor low cost industry site to an important worldwide financial location. With this expansion, the city has also became an interesting place for innovative and modern architecture.

The fourth largest building in the world is located in Shenzhen. With a height of almost six hundred meters (599m) the Ping An Finance Centre is located in the center of the city.

Shenzhen is expanding a lot, both upwards, with as many as half (48) of the city’s skyscraper being built right now, and outwards with construction sites all over the map.

Even if Chinese government wants to show off with one of its largest city, Shenzhen stays a well balanced place between architecture, trafic and green zones. It even won a green city award in 2014! Comparatively to its neighbor the skyline of this city as been kept very low and has only a fraction in number of high buildings. This is because the government has put in place incentives to build lower spaces for more cultural activities. We experienced ourselves a good example of this practice: the x.factory quarters in which we worked for 10 days.

Hong Kong, in contrast, is an old british colony and while it also grew very fast, it has much more ancient and intricate history than its neighbour. Its geographical situation is also very different. While Shenzhen can be a bit hilly, Hong Kong has full fledged mountains and they’re often covered with more buildings too. As a peninsula accompanied by a few islands, Hong Kong can’t expand as much as it would like to and the legal situation doesn’t make it easier. Indeed, by law, the territory must stay covered in by at least 40% of green forest. Hong Kong’s political system being much slower and less flexible than China’s, this hasn’t been changed to transform the rest of the landscape. The logical solution to this it to build higher and Hong Kong is the city with the most skyscrapers in the world: 7’681, but as the city surface becomes denser, more cars have to come and park in it, creating unmanageable traffic and congestion. Shenzhen tries to avoid this with wider roads from the get-go.

As free space becomes a rare good in the Hong Kong area, the gouvernement is searching for new solution for this problem. Two decades ago, one of the most dangerous airports in the world, located in the center of Honk Kong, was closed. An area of approximately 2.5 km^2 could be gained out of this. The plan for the use of this newly-freed area was an implementation of residential towers and financial areas.

The government is also investing to gain new space for an additional area of the Hong Kong Science park. As we discovered at the HKSTP presentation the new area will be located at the north of the city. Delimited from one side be the border with Shenzhen, this new area will provide 1.2 hectare site witch will allowed to build new towers for additional 74,000 sqm. This space couldn’t have been found inside the city and it why this kind of project have to be delocalised.

Hong Kong having grown more organically, it is more chaotic and Shenzhen feels eerily harmonious at moments. The visuals mapped on the LED-covered facades of the buildings are synchronized on a massive amount of high-rise buildings, making the city feel like one entity. The urban rhythm of blocks (and construction sites) is also so regular, that it’s hardly thinkable that it wasn’t centrally planned. The architecture itself reflects this idea of community, as we could see a surprising amount of buildings connected by bridges. This particular feature seems much more common in China than in the rest of the world, including Hong Kong.

While Dezeen’s articles related to Hong Kong mostly talk about interior design and clever solutions to optimize space, the Shenzhen section is all about buildings being built at high scale and incredible speed. While the governments of both city are heavily influencing its architecture, Hong Kong is about investing while Shenzhen is about controlling. Shenzhen is the city of speed, thanks to its governmental politics.

Nathan and Sam

Social media was pretty much everywhere during our stay here in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, but it took multiple forms, some of which were expected before leaving Switzerland, some not at all. It really made us reconsider how we use and how to leverage social media not only here, but also back home. In this brief report we will try to briefly explain the Chinese and Hongkonguese ecosystems, as well as point out the main differences and similarities between the two to better understand the topic.

First, let’s start with China. The world’s most populated country is not only an economic powerhouse but is also very technologically advanced with high living standards in most of the major cities. Shenzhen, dubbed China’s “Silicon Valley”, is at the forefront of this technological evolution, due to its manufacturing and R&D capacities. Social media starting booming worldwide thanks to the smartphone revolution, and it is not by coincidence that most of them come out factories located in Shenzhen or nearby in the Guangdong province. Huawei, Tencent, Xiaomi, ZTE, and newcomers like Oppo and Vivo, those are the big names that shape the technological landscape all over China.

But China nonetheless remains a communist country, where censorship and government control can still be felt in a multitude of ways. Not every content is accessible, as most of the major apps and platforms used in the Western world such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and Youtube are banned. We used VPNs (connection to internet through a private network) to access them during the trip, but by discussing with local people, the government is also starting to crack down on them. So, does that mean that Chinese people are not very active on Social media? The answer is: absolutely not!

The internet giant Tencent, which we had the privilege to visit during our stay in Shenzhen, is one of the largest and fastest growing companies not only in China, but also worldwide. Founded only 20 years ago, it is now at the center of the Chinese social media landscape. Its flagship product is WeChat, an all-in-one messaging app with over 1 billion (!) daily active users. The platform centralizes basically every service offered by Western social media platforms into one App. But more than that, WeChat is essentially becoming an app you can live on. Message friends, share pictures and stories of your everyday life, find a restaurant, book a hotel, use public transportation, pay your bills or your insurance or groceries, book a doctor’s appointment, go there in a cab you’ve just ordered on the app, the list goes on and on. Tiny issue: you need a Chinese bank account to setup a wallet, and gain access to everything that has a payment feature, so it was therefore not possible for us to use many products that WeChat offers. But Tencent doesn’t stop there though, as its first product, an instant messaging app called QQ, is still very popular, and other apps within the Tencent ecosystem are widely used.

The other big actors on the market are Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Youku, very similar to Youtube, and finally Baidu, the preferred search engine of the Chinese people. Other new companies are entering or have entered the market recently, and changes are so fast they often cannot be predicted.

The consumers are at the center of this social media ecosystem, and companies are very well aware of that. The fact that they can reach all of them via a one-and-only platform such as WeChat gives them a huge leverage as far as advertising and interacting with their communities. And of course, all of the data collected along this process allows the companies to use advanced business intelligence, machine learning and AI strategies. So, having said that, are the Chinese concerned about their privacy, like we are in Europe or in the US? The answer, surprisingly this time, is also absolutely not! They don’t mind the control the big internet companies, or the government has over their private lives, because security and social stability is their main focus.

But right across the southern border of Shenzhen, out of mainland China, is Hong Kong. The rules that applied in China no longer apply there, and this impacts the social media environment quite a bit.

Hong Kong is a special administrative region separated from the rest of China. It has over 200 islands and is a place where you find multiple cultures due to fact they were an old British colony. This is why HK is so open-minded, there is a lot of different people and last but not least, they almost ALL speak English, unlike China.

Our vision of social media in HK is completely different from what we saw in China. In Hong Kong you have access to every leading social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. They are often criticized for their data gathering and the fact that the government doesn’t have any power on them because they are private companies. WhatsApp is also mainly used in Hong Kong while in China they’re using their famous WeChat App. There are some difference because the apps aren’t used for the same purpose, but the first goal of them is to communicate. One is blocked in China and the other not. Guess which one is blocked. Hongkongese don’t use WeChat as much as the Chinese. Of course, if you want to use some western media, you have to use a VPN to pass through the Chinese government censorship. Contrary to China, you will not find any QR code (for WeChat) in the streets of HK. Maybe you’ll find it in a famous fast food but it is still not casual. As said before, you have access to the others western social media in HK and they are mainly using them. You can see a lot of Facebook or Instagram links for the companies. In China, obviously you’ll see a lot of QR code instead. With the point of view of social media, HK is like a western country lost in China. People in Hong Kong have adopted an hybrid way to use social media, mainly due their proximity with China and the international and cross-cultural status of the city.

Sylvain & Mehmed

Dear readers,

In this article, we will analyse the differences we can find about the theme « tourism » between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Indeed, we have found a lot of disparities during our trip in these two cities.

First of all, let’s talk about the language. Surely it is important to inquire about the language or languages spoken in the country you are travelling in. We knew for example that in Shenzhen inhabitants were speaking Mandarin and Cantonese and the two official languages of Hong Kong were Cantonese and English as Hong Kong was once a British colony.

After our stay in Shenzhen and some research, it seems like it is Mandarin that is mostly spoken. We also discovered that almost no one speaks English in restaurants, cafés and shops ! We thought that it would be quite easy to communicate as a lot of people speaks English everywhere in the world and we were baffled to fount out this fact. In Hong Kong however, most of inhabitants speak English.

Secondly, we can point out the visa procedure. We (Swiss citizens) had to apply for a visa to go to China BUT didn’t have to do anything for Hong Kong. It is something peculiar when we know that it is the same country. This is a result of the “one country, 2 systems” approach.

Thirdly, let’s discuss about the driving. It might be a detail but it is also something we have to consider. In China for example, we drive the same way as in Switzerland (which means on the right side of the road, for the non-Swiss readers). Nevertheless in Hong Kong, we drive on the other side. This is also due to the British colonisation. Before coming to Hong Kong, it was something that never occurred to us : we thought is was the same as in China. It is something people have to acknowledge: if you rent a car, when you cross the road, etc.

One thing that is really important is the food. In Shenzhen, you will found a big variation of what you can eat. There is mostly local dishes but you can also find some European dishes if you’d like to. Of course, there are most of the biggest fast food chains like McDonald’s, KFC or Burger King. The kind of dishes will be different related to the neighbourhood where you are; if you are in a place with a lot of attendance, you will find a quite large mix of dishes. The only problem you will be faced with is the language. If the restaurant is not a European one, there will be no translation on the menu to help you know what you will order. If you are lucky, it may have images to help you. If not, all is written in Chinese and the waiter won’t be useful neither. As it was told in the first point, people mostly speak Mandarin or Cantonese. So if you have a question in English, they won’t understand and will speak in Mandarin to you. This is why you should have a sim card with some internet connection on it to allow you to have a translator or try to find a wifi, but again also the wifi is something that could be difficult to find.

In Hong Kong it is different. Because it’s a destination better known to the rest of the world, you will find more common dishes than traditional ones, and also you will have no bad experiences with the menu language; all is written with a translation in English and almost all the waiters speak English very well or the basics just to help you find what you would like to eat. There are no respective neighbourhoods to a variety of dishes; you can find everything anywhere you are. You may also find more little shops where you can eat on the sidewalk as in Shenzhen.

Another part that is important to discuss about is the prices! First time you will be faced with, it is in the Hong Kong airport where you must change your money into Hong Kong Dollars (HKD, HK$) or in Renminbi (RMB, ¥), commonly called Yuan. For example, 1 USD = 6.79 RMB, 1 USD = 7.85 HKD. As you can see, there is a difference between the two destinations. It will be the same with everything you will pay; all the prices will be lower in Shenzhen. The metro will cost you “nothing” maybe 5 RMB for about 30 minutes instead of around 10 HKD for the same journey time. Of course, changes of metro/bus lines are included in the journey time. If you have to take the taxi, it will be the same, a lot cheaper in Shenzhen than in Hong Kong.

If you’d like to come back with some goodies or gifts for friends and family, you will not find traditional things in either city. In Shenzhen you will find a lot, lot, lot of electronic goodies like small funny electric fans, electronic lighter and things related to phones or technology of all kinds. Why? Because it is a city made for electronic markets.

In Hong Kong however, what you will find will be more useless gifts like counterfeit bags/watches/boombox, etc. Of course, most of those counterfeit products are found in the little markets. You will also find some clothes and shoes and stuff you can find as usual in your country or in the rest of the world like Nike/Addidas/H&M… There is one interesting thing about the little market with counterfeit objects; you can negotiate every price the seller tells you. For example, a lovely fake watch may be announced for 500 HKD, you can easily have it for 3 times less than that! But it will be the only places where you can do that.

If you are still searching for some traditional work like pottery or jade, etc., you will find some antiquarian shops or the jade market in Kowloon, but as you can expect, the prices will be very high.

In conclusion, we can say that even if Shenzhen and Hong Kong are just next to each other, there are a few differences we can point out. Hong Kong is more like a “western city” and Shenzhen resembles a typical big Chinese city. Plus, Hong Kong is a famous destination in tourism and Shenzhen is less renowned. For instance on one hand, when someone speaks about Hong Kong, people usually know where it is and want to know more about this city. On the other hand, when someone enunciates Shenzhen, people have generally never heard of it. Every divergence relates to the “one country, two systems” theory.

We are both so glad to have had the opportunity to live this experience. We might never have visited Shenzhen if we were not part of this project !

Déborah & Joanne

After spending more than 10 days in Shenzhen and 5 days in Hong Kong, we were able to compare the differences and similarities between the two systems of the same country. This text will talk about both Hong Kong’s and Shenzhen’s public transportation systems.

We will first explain and describe the transportation methods in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, before concluding on the differences between them.

First of all, in Shenzhen, the subway and buses are the two most common transport methods. The subway has only existed since the end of 2004. It currently has 8 lines, 166 stations and 286 kilometres of total trackage in operation. 7 new lines are under construction, so it will expand even further and serve more people. In 2017, it served 5.5 million people a day on average. Bus services in Shenzhen began in 1975, and now have expanded to a network consisting of near 1000 routes. Furthermore, we can underline that there is in some cases, efforts to make transportation in crowded trains more tolerable, expecially for women and people with disabilities. On an other hand, the desire to make the people’s daily commuting safer means a strenghten surveillance system aswell as a strong security gate at the entrance of the metro and even some crowd control equipment in case of riot or chaos. However, this doesn’t mean that it takes more time to get into the train, as everything is very efficient.

There are also taxis as in any other city. There are two types of taxi: blue taxis which are electric, and red taxis which are petrol. On a side note, non-electric cars are taxed at CHF 12’000 on purchase, which is why there are many electric cars in Shenzhen. There is also a mobile application called Didi that allows you to order a taxi. The application will make it possible to have either private drivers or taxis directly, so as not to bring the two sectors into competition. In Hong Kong however, the taxi system is sligthly different. It is technically illegal for Uber to operate in the country even though it is largely used. Maybe, part of the reason is that a taxi driving license is extremely costly (about 7 millions HKD) and in order not to decrease the value of this license, the number of taxis operating in the country is limited.

Still in Hong Kong, the most common transport methods are also metros and buses. However, there are two types of bus. Double-decker buses and minibuses. The minibuses are small buses with about fifteen places and are very fast. They don’t make all the stops, and they don’t stay very long at one stop. They almost give the impression of being in a karting when you are inside.

The metro in Hong Kong is called the MTR (Mass Transit Railway). It consists of 11 lines and more than 150 stations. It has 218 km of tracks, and has an average of 5 million people a day. The MTR is one of the most profitable metro systems in the world; it had a firebox recovery ratio of 187% in 2015, the world’s highest. The farebox recovery ratio of a passenger transportation system is the fraction of operating expenses which are met by the fares paid by passengers. It is computed by dividing the system’s total fare revenue by its total operating expenses.

Because of its coastal situation, we have also been able to witness how transportation in boat works. Big transit between important places like the airport or main Harbor are done by big boats but smaller travel between for example our place, HKUST, and trio beach, a beach just in front, is done by small boat though both seems yo be privately owned.

If you are adventurous, you can also allow yourself to try getting on the back of a motorbike that is specially customized to suit this kind of use. They even have a integrated umbrella to protect not only from the sun, but also from the rain, thanks to its slim and long shape.

 

Though it is not directly transportation, the octopus card is an awesome piece of plastic. It allows not only to pay for transportation but also for all conveniences, from toilet paper to umbrella. It can be reloaded pretty much in any places accepting octopus payment if the vendors are kind enough to do so.

In summary, after describing how Shenzhen and hong kong transportation system works, we can say a few things.
Because of its small size, massive population and hilly geography, unmotorized transportation in Hong Kong is extremely difficult. Another point is that due to Shenzhen relatively young age, it is much much more dynamic and smart, as some could qualify the city. Electricity is already everywhere and is going to be even more omnipresent, thanks to cheap technology and a vibrant and exciting tech community.
Hong Kong is a modern and consumption driven country and it is illustrated through it’s city centres which in most cases, forms big mass of tall interconnected buildings. You could literally spend your whole day never going out of this MEGA mall whereas Shenzhen still has space for expansion and growth.

This morning, we had the freedom to choose what we wanted to do. While some enjoyed a bit of sleep or relaxation, most of the teams were making final adjustments to their prototypes and especially pitches. Indeed, today was a pitch-heavy day as we had two sessions.

The first one was in H.K.U.S.T. (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) which is hosting us. The university invited a few persons for the event, including an HKUST entrepreneur in residence who has successfully started 5 companies: SL Ho. He opened the day with an honest speech on his story and companies.

The dean of HKUST then presented the ties between the University programs and entrepreneurship. We learned that Frank Wang, the founder of DJI, the world’s biggest drone company, studied in the same buildings as where we were. He also presented a few of the opportunities that were offered to student leaning towards entrepreneurship. Again, Hong Kong impressed us with both the number and the size of the help, financial and otherwise, that entrepreneurs and startups can get in this city. The FinTech sector was, of course, again highlighted as especially dynamic and promising.

Then 3 students from HKUST started the pitch session, each presenting his own company. The interesting thing was that each project was at very different stage, unlike the 5 CHIC teams who are all progressing under the same deadlines and milestones. One of them was already much more advanced than us, having already produced and started selling his multiple non-profit standalone educational VR headsets. The others were closer to the concept stage, but also had interesting visions to share with us.

The especially nice thing was that SL Ho stayed after his presentation and was giving very relevant, but helpful, feedback to each of the team. So when it was our turn, we could also discuss with him and benefit from his presence in addition to other HKUST members. The discussion kept going during the nice mingling and networking moment that followed. Sandra and Yann even interviewed some of the persons present to deepen their research on China.

After this busy afternoon, we went to the city center to enjoy the opportunity to pitch for the second time in front of experienced investors from an accelerator. The first time was in front of HAX in Shenzhen at the beginning of the trip and all teams had greatly improved their pitches in the meantime! While some of the feedback Brinc gave us had already been mentioned at previous pitches, some of the best advice came from them. For example, team Flowlin received the advice to start building a community around their values before starting a crowdfunding campaign or launching their product. As the Brinc.io team has created the biggest IoT (Internet of Things) startup community, they know very well how powerful it can be.

An interesting insight we got from Bay McLaughlin is that they believe that one of the most important technology of the next decades, is how we collect and use the data we earn in our everyday life. And since hardware is needed to collect our data, physical high-tech devices, the IoT, are only going to become more relevant.

After this last, intense, pitching session of the trip ended late in the evening, everyone went out to decompress in the nice Hong Kong neighborhood around Brinc.

Stayed tuned for more,

Nathan and Samuel, for the CHIC community.

Hi everyone,

MS7 is on its way. Which also means that our last days in Shenzhen and x.factory are approaching as well 🙁

On Tuesday, we went to Huaqiangbei Market to get our 3D-printed prototype. We were very happy with the result and we then went to buy some paint. The device is functional with the new PCB. Some finishing touches are still to be done such as sanding or correcting a screw hole that is too large, but generally speaking, We still have

to paint the device and add a temperature sensor on the PCB so that the scale adapts to the outside temperature.

Speaking of the business side, I also had the opportunity and pleasure to meet Fred, a recently graduated high school student from Shenzhen, and interviewed him. His answers helped us a lot for our potential Chinese adaptation market and on Thursday, Fred and I are going to interview some other people : restaurant manager, students, commuters, etc.

On the 17th, we went to the “Connecte to the future” Sino-Swiss Conference. We got a lot of information about the Province of Guangdong and we had to pitch.

After this looong evening, we finally headed home to do our laundry 😉

Stay tuned for the next posts 🙂

Dear Community,

Our first weekend here in Shenzhen gave us even more opportunities to explore the city and soak in as much Chinese culture as we could. Here’s a brief recap of what unfolded over those two days.

SATURDAY

The teams were split up as designers and business students had a schedule of their own with a workshop at the renowned Artop Group (AG), an industrial design company (and much more), located in the heart of the Shenzhen Design Industrial Park. The company is part of a vibrant community of design related businesses that all co-exist in one centralized location.

The goal of the workshop was to have the design and business aspects of our projects reviewed by designers working at AG in order to find a way to adapt our products to the Chinese market. The roles were then reversed, as our design and business students offered their views and gave advice on a selection of projects designed by Artop on how to make them more “European Ready”.

The language barrier was not always easy to overcome, but thanks to Jenny, our wonderful host, and her team, we were able to exchange, discuss and share all afternoon long, and we finally came to realize that despite the many differences between our two cultures and mentalities, we all spoke the same language: Passion for creation and innovation.

The insights gained by this mutual collaboration were immense and each side left with more than what it came with. Many of us will keep in touch with our Chinese counterparts for the rest of the project, and who knows, maybe on future ventures!

We ended the day by visiting AG’s “Wall of Fame”, a collection of the many products designed by the group since its foundation in 1999.

The engineers spent most of their day at x.factory, working on the prototypes, welding, sewing, coding, and more than likely, sweating. After the initial twists and turns that took place earlier this week, our connected devices are coming together nicely, but the road ahead is still long and the time is flying by, so all teams are putting in everything they have in order to be ready by the end of next week.

After a long day, and above all, a busy first week, the time finally came for every team to enjoy a well-deserved break on Saturday evening. The teams took this opportunity to bond and unwind together over drinks, local or international dishes in some of the numerous bars and restaurants Shenzhen has to offer.

SUNDAY

Sunday was our first day off since beginning our journey. Teams and supervisors were free to fill their day at their convenience. The design supervisors offered a cultural and artistic program with a tour of Dafen Village, the capital of faux paintings, or a visit of Design Society, a design and culture hub that includes a design museum.

Some students returned to Huaqiangbei in search of components, gadgets, or simply to get lost between the many stalls offering an abundance of technology.

Others took the chance to visit the famous China Folk Culture Village. The huge outside park recreates the many aspects of historical and traditional China, giving us a taste of everything that this wonderfully diverse country has to offer

Finally, the teams mixed up together to watch the World Cup Final, opposing France and Croatia. The French came out on top, to the delight of our French members who ended the weekend by celebrating their victory.

Have great start of the week and stay tuned for the next daily blog post!

On Saturday, July the 14th, we had to finish redesigning our product. Because of the lack of designers in the CORE team, Lison helped our mechanical engineer to do it. We will receive the printed device between Tuesday and Wednesday and we can’t wait to see how it looks like !

In the afternoon, the two business students headed to Artop Group (AG), a company providing clients with high-end comprehensive design solutions with integrative planning.

Buildings from the Shenzhen
Design Industrial Park.

Model of the Shenzhen
Design Industrial Park.

Each CHIC team was with Chinese people from AG and it was a very nice experience. Indeed, it was not always easy to communicate and the sound of laughter was everywhere in the room ! Every CHIC team presented its project to the AG people and vice-versa. Their feedback helped us a lot and we could therefore see if it was possible or not to adapt our product in the Chinese market.

Key learnings of the meeting with AG.

Aaaaaand finally the weekend ! To resume our first week in Shenzhen, we could say : a lot of intensive work and not a lot of sleep ! 😉

We couldn’t wait to eventually enjoy a free day !

And today, Monday the 16th, we are back in x.factory to continue the development of our project. Stay tuned for the next posts 🙂

Feedback from Eric

On July 13th, the two business students could talk with Eric, Chinese entrepreneur, about the CORE project. It was a very rich experience as it was quite difficult to explain the project. They were explaining it first to Violet who was then translating to Eric and vice-versa. Eric gave a few advices and to resume, it was a great exercise for the communication 🙂

Huaqiangbei Market

The next day, we made our way to the famous Huaqiangbei market ! It was incredible : so many stores, so many gadgets, so many floors ! If you need anything, just go this market and you’ll find it ! Here is a pic to give you an idea of what it looks like :

First pitch !

After visiting the market, we went to HAX, World’s First and Largest Hardware Accelerator, to give our first pitch. It was a great experience to give a pitch in real condition and to have a critical feedback from Ben who has been working at HAX for several years.

Thanks to Ben, we now know that for the next pitches we have to improve our message to give a full understanding of the project without going into the details : it gave way too much complexity ! We will work on this and try to simplify the process to a maximum. The next pitch is on Tuesday, in front of Sino-Swiss.

Thanks again to HAX and Ben for welcoming CHIC 2017-2018 🙂

Dear readers,

Here’s what happened on our first day in Shenzhen.

We all woke up bright and early and had breakfast together which allowed us to learn more about each other. We also discussed our expectations and the challenges we might face.
Thanks to our supervisors, we also got to understand what to expect from Shenzhen’s transporation system and most importantly xfactory, a new maker hub with open technologies at it’s center.
At 8:30 in the morning, we met in the lobby and made our way over there. In the metro, we could sense that everybody was super excited to get started and learn more about the hardware startup ecosystem in Shenzhen.

As soon as we arrived, we spent the morning discovering this dynamic makerspace and the ressources we would have at our disposition to create several functional prototypes.

Most importantly, we met the team who would be supporting us for the next two weeks. This team of superstars is composed of Violet, Kay and Alison who were also excited to learn more about us and our products.
With their help, all teams set up their workspace and got to work. Before going into details about what we did, let’s learn a little more about xfactory and the neighborhood we are working from.

First, it’s good to know that the makerspace is located a little less than an hour away from the center of Shenzhen and the easiest way to get there is by metro and walking for a few minutes.

xfactory is actually based in Cloud City, a brand new neighborhood with a “Design Commune” at it’s heart.

Cloud City is a neighborhood being developed by Vanke, one of China’s largest real estate developer. The commune we are working from is one of the first buildings that is fully functional in Cloud City.
The reason for this is that Cloud City is being built to attract talent and potential partners from other parts of the world. The main purpose is to inspire chinese entrepreneurs in the Shenzhen area by showcasing innovative ideas developed elsewhere.
For the CHIC team, this means that we get to show-off all the hard work we did over the past months and get unique insights from all types of entrepreneurs working in various industries and people who have a lot of experience in hardware development.

Now let’s talk a bit more about what we accomplished on our first day. After the amazing tour of the facilities led by Violet & Alison, we settled in to our dedicated workspace right next to other chinese entrepreneurs.

We were more than happy to realize that all our needs for the next two weeks were covered from good food to all the essential machines to create our prototypes.
The best thing about being here is that we can finally work with a real startup mindset.

Our first activity consisted of fixing our plan, our priorities and finding alternatives to possible problems we could face in our project. Then, we got to work!
Each team had a brefing with supervisors from ECAL & HEAD who gave us useful design directions to start iterating our products. Business students sat down with Marc to get useful insights on how to conduct market research in China and how to best prepare our team for the challenges ahead.
Engineers on the other side got working on the the prototype, finalizing the PCBs and working on sourcing key components.

At the end of the day, all teams had defined their priorities for the week and developed their own system to manage their product development process.
We are happy to say that it was good start and are hopeful to be able to create and showcase a product that works.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Seeed Studio & xfactory for the great working conditions and enabling us to achieve our goals as a potential hardware startup.

Stay tuned for our daily blog posts!

Tim & Vignesh

Dear CHIC colleagues

The last few weeks have been a real push for the CORE team. Indeed we finally created a functional prototype and tested it with a potential customer. The feedback helped us a lot and we know what to change to improve our product.

During the take-off day, we learned a lot about China & Hong Kong and we will do everything to avoid critical incidents, even if some will probably happen 😉 We also had a rich feedback of our pitch and we know that we have to rehearse, rehearse and rehearse again !

After pitches, a lot of information, a few exercises and a very long flight, we finally arrived in Shenzhen !

Today, we discovered the x.Factory and Seeed studios. We could get help from every supervisors and local workers who really helped us with our project. After a long discussion with Lison, we decided to completely change the design of our connected device ! Our current device is functional but we would like to make it smaller. It will be a real challenge for engineers due to every change we have to make.

For the business side of the project, we are still organizing every important date and deadlines we have to respect (as you can see on the pic). We also have to see if our product can fit the Chinese market or can be adapted.

See you tomorrow 🙂

CORE team

Dear CHIC members,

Last thursday we had our 5th Milestone where we were finally able to show the horizontality of our project.

On the electronical side, the PCB was finally received and mounted. The tests are in progress. Regarding software development, the Bluetooth characteristics were implemented and a test code was built to work with other parts of the project.

On the IT side, the apps for the seller is still in the making, but the Bluetooth information can now be sent from the electronical part and can be transfered to the database server. The server reception has been working flawlessly. This means that all the parts of our system are starting to run well together.

The One-page website is now close to be finished and can already be visited at this address : http://core-chic.surge.sh/

From the mechanical point, the printing of the base of the scale has been executed, so we can now begin integrating all the electronical parts. As 3D printing takes a lot of time (due to school limitations), the cover part of the device has not yet been printed, though it is set to begin shortly.

Here a picture to illustrate the integration between the mechanical part and the electronical part.

Have a good week and see you so soon!

CORE Team

Dear CHIC members,

What a ride it has been since the last milestone. At our last presentation, we finally had something to show for, and we have to say, it felt good to see our hard work pay off.

The visual identity of our connected system is getting more defined by the day, thanks to the efforts from our mechanical engineer, who’s been working closely with Lison Christe, an industrial designer from ECAL. New logo, new design for our connected scale, everything is shaping well on that part.

The software aspects are evolving fast as well, and we were able to show a live demo of our online ordering system during the presentation. The website and its functionalities are still a work in progress, but thanks to some valuable insights from our supervisors, we were able take care of the few blindspots that we had, mostly in the ordering and retrieving of the meals.

The business process has been a central talking point as well, and after a quantitative and a quantitative survey on the customer side and restaurant owner side, we have been able to better assess the market and position our product within it.

The most crucial points for the next few steps will be the development of the electronical parts and the establishement of the BOM, as the schedule is getting tighter and tighter for ordering the components before leaving to HKG.

We will be back soon with more info and more visual content, especially on the marketing side.

Good week to all, and see you soon!

Your CORE Team

Dear CHIC Community

After presenting the latest iteration of the CORE system at the MS3 to our supervisors in Fribourg, we left with some very insightful feedbacks to improve the product.

The interactions between the restaurant owners and the application was a major discussion topic after our presentation. Among other things, the problematic of the weight precision and menu choices has also been mentioned. With this in mind, we have decided that the choice of the meal will no longer be made in grams but with predefined sizes (small, medium, large).

Before and after the MS3, the business students have conducted some interviews in the local takeaway restaurants around our campus and in the city of Fribourg. The results of the survey have shown that there is an interest in a product like the one we are developing but there are certain points that can’t be applied the way we imagined. Again, the problematic around the weight precision was mentioned and justified with the fact that it would take up too much time the serve the exact quantities.

Our software engineers have made great progress for the mobile app and they have been able to demonstrate various functionalities of the system.

Despite the fact that we don’t have a designer on our team, the shape of the device has changed during the past few weeks and we couldn’t decide on the final form of the scale yet. All our features and components have been defined and have now to be assembled into the optimal form.

Now our team is approaching the next milestone, and  with that the end of the semester. We are looking forward to the next steps and the prototyping stage.

Dear CHIC Community

After presenting the latest iteration of the CORE system at the MS3 to our supervisors in Fribourg, we left with some very insightful feedbacks to improve the product.

The interactions between the restaurant owners and the application was a major discussion topic after our presentation. Among other things, the problematic of the weight precision and menu choices has also been mentioned. With this in mind, we have decided that the choice of the meal will no longer be made in grams but with predefined sizes (small, medium, large).

Before and after the MS3, the business students have conducted some interviews in the local takeaway restaurants around our campus and in the city of Fribourg. The results of the survey have shown that there is an interest in a product like the one we are developing but there are certain points that can’t be applied the way we imagined. Again, the problematic around the weight precision was mentioned and justified with the fact that it would take up too much time the serve the exact quantities.

Our software engineers have made great progress for the mobile app and they have been able to demonstrate various functionalities of the system.

Despite the fact that we don’t have a designer on our team, the shape of the device has changed during the past few weeks and we couldn’t decide on the final form of the scale yet. All our features and components have been defined and have now to be assembled into the optimal form.

Now our team is approaching the next milestone, and  with that the end of the semester. We are looking forward to the next steps and the prototyping stage.

Hello everyone !

The beginning of the project is finally launched !

Team Fribourg has eventually changed its name : CORE. You probably wonder what it means. Well, it’s the acronym for Choose, Order, Retrieve & Eat.

We have met today essentially to talk about the material we have to use for the lunchbox. Indeed we have to be very careful about which one we choose so it is safe for people to eat their food in it. We must have the solution by next week’s meeting.

We also have distributed each task to do to every member of the team for the following weeks.

Usually the meetings take place at the school but we made an exception for today and decided to have a beer at the same time 🙂

See you soon,

CORE Team

Dear CHIC Community,

Team Fribourg was very pleased to meet all of you during this weekend !

All the expertise that was here helped us very much. We had a lot of different feedbacks & we sometimes got punched in the face. But everything that was said helped us to question & re-evaluate the things we thought were acquired. We then took a step further & realized we had to change our customer segment. Indeed, it was way too complex & we didn’t have enough knowledge to go into a medical field.

We eventually chose another customer segment & our present project has deviated a bit from the initial one. However, we are more motivated than ever & will work hard on this new project.

Can’t wait to see you in China !

Team Fribourg

PS: Here is the beautiful prototype we created this weekend 😉

Dear CHIC Community,

The team #5 from Fribourg wasn’t very active until now, but this is over !
“Team #5″… What an impersonal name ! This is because we have not yet finalized the choice of our CHIC project.

We are on-board since a couple of weeks, more or less one month, but for sure nobody knows who we are !

So let us introduce ourselves : we are 6 young and motivated students, studying in two different schools :

• Déborah Berset, student from the HEG-FR
• Timothée Biselx, studying Computer Science in the HEIA-FR
• Sylvain Oppizzi  student from the HEG-FR
• Thomas Schaller, studying Computer Science in the HEIA-FR
• Samuel Trachsel, studying Mechanical Engineering in the HEIA-FR
• Cédric Udressy, studying Electrical Engineering in the HEIA-FR

During the ideation weekend, we imagined some early solutions which have been abandoned since. But even though creating and searching for ideas is a difficult exercise, we don’t give up !

An example of what a fast brainstorming can produce

We have met several times since the ideation weekend to do some productive brainstorming (or not) and we have now chosen the two topics we want to present during the Milestone 1… which is coming in just a few days !

Our ideas are concerning the fields of food wasting and how to enhance a presentation. We hope to find the great device, which will solve one of these issues.

Now that you know who we are, stay tuned for the next exciting news of the Team #5 ! 🙂