NOX

Hi everyone,

Our Monday in Hong Kong was completely occupied by a design fiction organized by CHIC in collaboration with the Hong Kong Design Institute. The objective of this design fiction was, based on recent Hong Kong news, to extrapolate what this city would be in 2025 and to imagine a potential product that might be necessary for this future. Each NOX member was in different teams composed of two other CHIC students and one Chinese student. This day went very well and gave birth to many very interesting imaginary products.

Tuesday morning was occupied by a visit of the Logistics and Supply Chain MultiTech R&D Centre in the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks. This visit was an opportunity for us to discover the LSCM company which works in the field of computer science and robotics in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong and the government. During this visit we were also able to understand what the HKSTP is and what it plans to achieve for the future of Hong Kong.

Tuesday afternoon was devoted to the preparation of the last pitch of the evening at Brinc.io. For this pitch we were able to show our lamps prototype in operation. The pitch went very well, the team of Brinc.io gave us very good feedback about our NOX lamps. We worked so long on this lamps, so we are very happy to have been able to show our functional prototypes for this last pitch.

We do not have much time left in Hong Kong and we intend to take advantage of the time left to make this trip as profitable as possible.

See you

NOX team

On Sunday, we left Shenzhen after two intense and crazy weeks!

Between the pitches, the companies’ visits, the workshop and just working on our prototype at x.Factory, the times flew so fast!

It was really two weeks full of learnings and discovery, and also stress to finish the prototype (plus repairing them when one PCB broke 30 minutes before our last milestone…)

So, on Saturday we left the city to discover Hong Kong for a few days and some last pitches and workshops.

Sunday afternoon we had some free time to go around the city and get lost in all the little streets and markets. The atmosphere here is so much different from Shenzhen and it’s so interesting.

Finally, last evening we were split into different activities and events: some were at Dim Sum Lab, others at Makerbay, and a few dining with a private banker.

We have still a lot to do here before closing this project.

Stay Tuned,

-Nox

Hi everyone !

Yesterday for the first time, we assembled two lamps completely, and after connecting them, we could see the animation when they exchange the movement data.

Indeed, the last time we assembled a lamp, we only put a test program to check the functionality.

So, we have an amplitude and speed variation that fluctuates depending on the intensity of movement. As for the light intensity, for now, we have only the intensity of the white color that varies, and we realized that the change was hardly noticeable. We will then add a red hue during a movement to add a little heat. On the contrary, when there is no movement, we will replace the red with the blue to have a colder light.

We had the pleasure of presenting our prototype in front of Chinese makers and we have positive feedbacks when they come to see the prototype after the pitch.

For the 3D printed parts, we had the opportunity to be able to order them in a company that uses a powder rather than a filament for the realized ones. These pieces should have a better rendering. We are therefore eager to receive them, in the day, or tomorrow.

Regarding the rest, we will present our project at Milestone 7 tomorrow, and then we leave Shenzhen for Hong Kong. A new city which we will talk about in a future blogpost

Stay connected

Nox

Yesterday, we visited the PCB factory in the surroundings of Shenzhen.

And thanks to that, I finally understood what the engineers in our team were working on and talked about.

From CNC machine cutting cooper to the quality control check and the chemicals baths and fabrication steps, we saw it all.

But, being out of the craziness of the Shenzhen’s city center and its maker spaces everywhere, we were in an industrial factory. And some aspect of it impressed me, but also made me think a lot.

Everyone has heard about worker conditions in factories in China or other emerging markets, but to have seen it with my own eyes gave me a whole new perspective on it.

First, the factory streets are old buildings, with massive rusted air-coolers running all days. When the city center is brand new, the surroundings look more to how we imagine the factories and mass-production.

The machines constantly make noises, there is dust in the air, in some rooms the temperature is above 30 degrees, and the chemicals smells strong.

And in the middle of that, people have no ear-protection, no protection glasses, and the masks do not retain any particles. Some workers are also doing some repetitive tasks, pieces by pieces, hand by hand.

To see the work condition here and especially be able to feel it with my own sense, even if it was for a short moment, really disturbed me.

However, in comparison with last year, they told us that they invested and bought a lot of new machines to automatize some tasks. For instance, one of the many quality control processes has been automized. The workers have just changed jobs: they became controller and manager of these robots’ machines.

This visit made me think about ethics, work condition, and what I’ve learned in a class on this topic, and how we have a different completely different perspective about it in Europe. A few years ago, I visited a factory in Germany and was amazed by how it was working and how the company’s culture focused on the well-being of its employees.

In China, my vision has changed, or at least it takes another perspective. And it made me think how as a young swiss and European girl, gave us a different perspective about works conditions, and how I imagined it.

Seeing some of the innovations that are being developed in Shenzhen, and discovering startups looking for solutions for a better and greener future, is inspiring and push us to go in this direction. There are so many possibilities and solution to find to produce better, and so many opportunities. We just have to start it.

Written by Giulia Lécureux.

Hey readers!

I am pretty proud to say that our prototypes’ connection and communication have been tested and approved. Even if small problems remain, we can say that we have a functional prototype of communication between the lamps.

Otherwise, our business teammate has determined a cost of production; from witch follows the breaking point of sales (which means the number of sales where the investment is compensated by the margin).

Designers have also achieved to model the final prototype, which is on the way of printing. As soon as this was maid, they started thinking about the industrialization of the parts.

Hi everyone!

Yesterday we finally had our last Milestone presentation, before flying to China.

We also had the pleasure to pitch in front of two additional guests, Pierre, and Mehmed from Guido, who participated last year and happen to be there at Hepia for the presentation.
They also give us really valuable advice about our project!

During the last two weeks, a lot of work has been done:

The designers are still working on improving the design and the pieces with the engineers to find the best fit between the esthetics and fitting all the component in the lamps.
The engineers finished all their individual’s parts, the WIFI connection, the LED PCB, and the main PCB. Everything is working separately, and now it’s time to connect everything.
For the business side, I am still working on improving the storytelling and branding of the lamps, and prepare the rest for the trip.

We are super excited to go to China to finalize our lamps, and are looking forward to it!

Giulia

From NOX

Hi everyone! It has been a long time without any news from Unum+Solum, but a lot of work has been done in a month!

Since MS4, where we decided to change our design and type of movement, we came out with a new model of lamps, and with several options for the legs that we will test to find the best one.

• The engineers (Philip, Raoul, and Loic) worked on the PCB, the LED, and the WIFI connection between the two objects.
• The designers (Romain and Tanguy), as mentioned, refine the visuals, started to create the landing page and printed some pieces of the lamps in 3D.
• For the business side, Giulia refined the business model and worked on the different sales model possible for our products.
• We also received the PCB a few days ago and were able to assemble all electronics pieces in the central part of the lamp!

We are also preparing the China trip and are very looking forward to going!

Oh, and we also get a new name … 😀

Hello everyone,

Last Wednesday we had the presentation of the Milestone 4.

As we previously explained, we decided to completely re-think the design of our lamps, since it was costly to produce, quite complicate to prototype, and we are gently running short of time.

therefore, we presented a new design, which is still a work in progress since our designer came out with this idea a few days ago only.

We kept all the element from before: movement mechanisms, two interconnected lamps, motion sensors, and light changing color and intensity. But with a more straightforward form. With this design, we also have a better vision of the material we want to use:

• Wood for the three legs,
• A central plastic piece that will hold the electronics parts and the motors,
• Either fabrics or PVC tube for the upper and lower part.
• The new mechanisms will now be a rotative one, instead of an up-and-down movement.

Our engineers are over with their exam and now have their full time to work on the project, so it’s time to go fast, but to go well!

Unum+Solum.

Dear All,

Yesterday our two designers (Romain and Tanguy) and business developer (Giulia), met with our 2 supervisors from the HEAD.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the feasibility of our project, especially because the motions, number of pieces, material were too complex and might be too expensive.

So we take their advice carefully and decided to pivot. Our designer started immediately to re-think the overall design, but keeping our key elements:
The motions mechanisms
The motions sensors
The poetical aspect of the project.

So now it’s back to work, we have a lot to do for next week milestone (time flies so faaaaast!)

This milestone will not be easy for us, especially since our engineers (Loic, Philip & Raoul) are in the middle of their mid-semester exam. From next week they will have all their times at school to focus on CHIC. So then the sprint starts!

Team Unum+Solum

Hi everyone!

Last Wednesday we had our Milestone 3 presentation at the HEAD in Geneva with our respective supervisors.

We made a lot of progress in the weeks before the presentation, to finally get some more final design of our set of lamps.

The presentation went well, and it was followed by a 1h30 debriefing and feedbacks that were really useful.

We need to develop and concretize more some aspect of the project.

• Business side: improve the elevator pitch and some aspect of the business model canvas.
• Design side: the complete user journey and the experience, push more the poetical aspect of the lamp and the connexion between the two users.
• Engineering side: we need to take decisions on the final engineering and mechanical features, in order to have a real goal in mind for the development.

In short, there was really a lot of information and advice. Now, it is time to jump into Milestone 4 with more prototyping, taking precise decisions on the path with want to take, and develop the branding and positioning of our set of lamps.

Team Unum+Solum

Hello everyone!

It has been a long time since our last post, but work is still going on!

We are preparing for the milestone 3 next week, finishing some reflection on some aspect of the project and still defining the specificities of it.
The designers and engineers are narrowing down the essentials features and mechanisms to incorporate in our lamps, how to make them move and works.
From the business side, I organized a small focus group and demo to get more insights from potential customers, their comments on our concepts and their general appreciation of the project. It was really helpful to get more insights to develop a business model canvas, update the value proposition canvas, and personas.

We also developed two mini “prototype” as Proof of Concept: it’s a motion sensor that switches on and off a light in the other mini POC, and vice versa.

We still have a lot to do for next week and to develop a functional MVP, but we are on our track!

The lift-off weekend was, as usual, really intense, rich in feedback and insights, and very productive!

After having spent the last week preparing for our presentation, we finally presented our idea at the start of the weekend.

Followed by feedbacks sessions with the supervisors of each discipline, it really helped us get a clearer vision on the direction we want to take, what to improve, and what we were missing.

The feedback and participation from John Fass from the Royal College of Art in London were really helpful too, especially regarding the data aspect and risks management of our MPV. He gave us precious insight and advice on how we should handle it.

This weekend has also given us the opportunity to refine our concept and define more precisely our MVP.

By the way, now it’s time to tell you more about it!

We are going to re-transcribe the presence of two separated people in a poetical way thanks to a set of connected and mechanical lamps.

Unum+Solum

Hello everyone!

It has been quite a long time since our last post, but better late than never! 😉

The exams system is a bit different in Geneva and the HES-SO than our friends from EPFL, ECAL, and UNIL. We add them all over 10 days. So the past two weeks were quite intense for us.

But we did not forget our CHIC project! And now we have a few weeks to focus only on it.

Last Tuesday, we had the pleasure to meet with Vignesh Venkatachalam and Romain Talou from last year edition (Guido team).
They gave us precious advise and recommendation on how to handle our project. It was also nice to hear about their experience, what they did wrong and what they did well and so on.

The main take away we have to remember fro them is: Prototype the more you can, test, improve and repeat!

This meeting really helped us to be back on track, and moreover, we came out with a new idea that really motivates all of us.

Keeping our core space of creating something for two persons that are distant, our Romain proposed us an idea of two connected lamps. It took us a bit of time to get this idea, but now we think we have found something interesting to work on. And as Guido’s team told us, it’s now time to build it!

The day after, Loic already built a “prototype of a prototype”. You can see it on the video here after.

(PS: We are not going to compete with Philips, we have something different in mind. We tell you more next week with some sketch and prototype 😉 )

Hi everybody,
This week, we are having a lot of fundamental questions about feelings. It is hard to understand exactly what one feels when he misses someone, and even harder to know how to feel better.
However, we are sure that we are about to find some keys that will enable us to succeed the challenge we have given ourselves.

Stay connected to know more

The Unum+Solum team

Hi everyone,

We hope you had great Christmas, and we wish you a happy new year 2019 !

Our first meeting of this year was more productive than the last in 2018. So, we have find a concrete idea and we will focus on it to reach Milestone 2.

With our future product, your patience will reward you if you reach the challenge given to you.

Stay connected to know more
The Unum+Solum team

Hi everyone,

As usual, we had our weekly meeting to discuss our advancement and the next steps to take, but this week we were more focused on the M&M’s dispenser than on our project.

We still did our best to have a productive meeting, and we continued the discussion we had last week about our first solution. We considered the pros and cons of our idea and we also came up with a few new leads but we didn’t come up with a concrete idea.

Today we will meet a member of the Toygether team to talk about their research and their insights, as they have done a project that has some similarities to ours. They focused on parents living separately from their children and we think that we can get some really interesting information from their research.

We will have our next meeting during the holidays but first, we are excited about Christmas and new year.

We look forward to seeing you next time and wish you a Merry Christmas!

The Unum+Solum team

Hi everyone,

Following the ideation workshop we had last week, we are still in the process of finding projects, so we did a lot of research on our theme and the already existing projects.

As well, we focused on trying to refine our Human space to a more specific one, but it’s a difficult task because we don’t want to close any door on some possible opportunities.

This week, we had a really interesting and productive meeting with Savicic Gordan, a HEAD teacher. We discussed ideas that we have and he told us the positive and negative points about them and how to improve them. He also gave us some advice as well as offering new and fresh ways of seeing our own ideas and where they may lead.

In the coming days, we will  continue our research on ideas with the advice that Mr. Gordan gave us.

Here is a short overview video on the talk of this week.

Hello everyone!

This week started with a new workshop to launch us on the new Milestone Objectives: Ideation!

Now that we identified our opportunity space, and work to refine it according to the feedback we got, we can now start to think about solutions to the problems with identified.

Monday night we met at EPFL as usual for the workshop and we had to do different exercises individually to come up with the maximum of potential ideas. Not easy to start, but we ended up with a dozen of idea per person. We then discussed them and comment them within our teams, and finally reflected on the best idea of the evening, to then pitch it with an experience map.

The exercises were really useful to show us another methodology and tools to use to help us in this new process.

At the end of the week, our team met in a bar to discuss our ideas and to organize the work for the following weeks in a more relaxed atmosphere.

And here you can have a look at our ideas on paper and Loic pitching it!

The first Milestone presentation is done!

Last Wednesday, our team had to present our opportunity space with our human, physical and data space.
We worked a lot all the weekend before to finalize our researches and insights, writing our report and preparing us for the presentation.
The meeting took place at the HEAD in Geneva, our supervisor and coordinator from our schools were present together with Marc Laperrouza too.

It was quite stressful but it went well! Our goal was to make them understand where we want to go, the purpose of it and that there is potential in our opportunity space.
From Loneliness, we pivot to the feeling of missing someone, and how it can make someone feels lonely. To understand better, we ended up with :

• Human Space: Couple or family
• Physical Space: living separately
• Data Space: Virtual interaction/communication

And from that, our research question is:

How might we improve the interaction for couples or families living separately, because they feel a lack of emotional and physical connection in this kind of relationship?

We will have to precise our human space, meaning focusing on a particular group of people but the global idea is here.

Next step now, is the Ideation workshop on Monday at EPFL, to start defining our solution.

Last Research Sprint!

Hi everyone!

These last days have been intense, REALLY intense. As you know, next week we have our first milestone and have to present our opportunity space. So we spend the weekend finalizing and refine our spaces, map, data, and insights.

The week was split between our individual research fields, with interviews and one last survey, and gather all our findings to work together on our opportunity space. We meet at the HEAD this time and Saturday at Unimail (We work as nomads, finding a spot to work on the weekend in Geneva is not an easy task..).

Mapping, brainstorming, analyzing, writing, pretty much describe our weekend.

We hope to finish not too late and get enough time to sleep and be on shape Wednesday!

We also think about a little symbol to represent our new opportunity space. Check our video to discover it 😉

Another week, another workshop!

This week has started with a new workshop to prepare us to pitch our opportunity space at the end of the month.

The difficulty in these exercises arise when we had to present what we are going to pitch and at the time we are still in a “dig broader” phases of research and nothing has been really decided yet.

But thanks to the good advice and the help of Mr. Benedict Stalder, we have been able to start to think and prepare us with the right tools. He helped us reflect on the structure and elements of our pitch: what are our goals, who the audience will be, what emotions we want them to feel, and so on.

But the week is not over!

Our “dig broader” researchers are still on. We launched a small survey to analyze some aspect of loneliness, in order to keep them to go deeper in it or put them apart.

Thursday night we meet as usual at HEPIA for our weekly organization meetings. Brainstorming, discussion on our insights and findings, planning the next week objectives were our usual topics.

The milestone 1 deadline is approaching and there is still a lot of work to do. But it’s on a good track!

Hi Everyone!

It is only the beginning of our CHIC journey and we already have a lot to manage and to do!

Last weekend, we had a workshop on team-building, decision-making, conflict management, and communication presented by professor Jean-Philippe Maitre.

We did exercises to help us to build our team-spirit, improve our communication skills inside the team and discuss about problem resolution processes. It was really interesting to do it through exercises that were not directly related to our project so that we could learn to work together in a neutral way.

This workshop helped us to know each other better in the team and to develop our communication skills.

We concluded this workshop by writing the base of our team contract, that is the common ground guideline to follow to smooth the experience of working together.

Finally, we did not win the win the Paper Tower Contest, but we sure did make the highest one ! 😉

A few days after the kick-off weekend of CHIC, and having the time to reflect all the new information we received, we met to organize our work for the coming weeks.

1st news, we changed our team name: we are now … Unum+Solum!

It reflects two dimensions we want to explore: the loneliness and the concept to gather.

Our first meeting took place in Geneva at HEPIA. We discussed what our initial Physical Space, Human Space, and Data Space inspire us and we thought about it. Trying to understand in which direction we should go with our opportunity space.

We refined our initial idea selected during the kickoff weekend to go for :

• Human Space: People Alone
• Physical Space: People that are together but not communicating
• Data Space: the Physiological state of people

Our next step is to go on the field! To analyze people and their activities, meet them and interview them to define more precisely our opportunity space.

Finally, do you want to have an overview of our brainstorming session? CLICK HERE 🙂

Stay tuned!

1st step Done !

The kickoff weeekend of the CHIC was really intense and full of thinking, ideation, brainstorming and of course fun!

We started the kickoff weekend working with all the other students from EPFL, UNIL, and ECAL. We made differents exercises to introduce us to the right methodology to use. We then went out on the field, shadowing people and trying to understand them and getting insights.

The second day was dedicated to build a specific opportunity space from the insights we gathered. We then pitched our ideas individually and then voted for our favorite, in order to have a common starting point for our project.

Our team is formed of 6 students from HEPIA, HEG, and HEAD and we will dig into the theme of lonelyness.

Stay tuned to see what our findings will be !