Team E. Alderson

During this Monday's class we were tasked with coming up with a design for a universal remote control, that would be suitable for ages between 18 and 80. We decided to come up with a remote that was similar to what already exists since everyone knows how a TV remote controller works and what the basic functions should be. And since we had to make it suitable for people with bad eyesight or who may not be able to adapt easily to a change in the layout we made the main functionality of having numbers and two separate buttons for changing the channel and changing the volume a prominent feature on the remote. Thus people who are used to what already exists should be comfortable with using this remote. For technologically inclined users, we accommodate them by providing them with a context-sensitive slide-out touchscreen that provides the user with the additional functionality such as a keyboard and trackpad if they want to use their SmartTV to browse the internet. As well as this ...

Our teams week 4 Sprint meeting took place on 25th September in The Hub in Áras na Mac Léinn right after our Advanced Professional Skills lecture. Like we agreed during our last Sprint, we started off by creating a 'week4' channel on Slack to communicate with each other and to help us plan any tasks we have to complete to stay on track with our agenda. Formally the Planning meeting started off by writing up all the tasks we have to complete before next week and following that we started discussing who should complete each task. We have recently started to take a different approach when working our assignments for the module. We found a quote and decided to implement it, or at least try to, when doing our work. "It's not work if you're having fun!", keeping that in mind we took into consideration who enjoyed which parts of the trial-run exercises we did in class and based on our personalities and preferences we divided the workload up as evenly as we could....

In order to gain experience in creating personas for our final idea: ThawFreeze, we prepared by creating a dummy one first. This 'trial-run' persona was created for Eye Cinema and our team started off by thinking up of which of our friends and family members would be  regular cinema goers to base a persona off them. Although it turned out that not many people we know of take pleasure in regularly attending cinema showings, we finally figured out one person we knew of and although it was only one person, it was enough for this exercise. We started writing down the facts we knew. Her name was Asia and she was a 21 year old student. Moving on to discussing her Behaviour and Habits we wrote down how often she visits cinema, which was roughly every 3 weeks and included a fact we all agreed was just as important, she likes to arrive to the showings very early, sometimes up to 40 mins and likes to sit and look at posters of upcoming movies. After discussing what she found diff...

We started this sprint off with sprint planning sessions. We had two planning meetings. One occurring on Monday directly after our Advanced Professional Skills lecture and another meeting taking place after our lectures had ended Tuesday afternoon. Organizationally we made one change in the way we segmented our communication. We decided that instead of having multiple channels on Slack for the various aspects of our work that we would have a single channel for each week of the term. And thus for this sprint, we relegated all our communication to the new week3   channel on Slack. Our first planning meeting was short due to the lecture slides not being on available on Blackboard making it difficult for us to work out which tasks we had to do. However, we could decide on who could write this week's sprint retrospective blog. Also, we decided on a final name for our product. We all posted what we believed would be a good name for our product, into the week3 channel so th...

Considering the fact that we will have to create a Business Model Canvas for our actual product idea, the best way to familiarize ourselves with how to do it correctly was to do a trial run. That is exactly what we have done today in class. For preparation we have created a BMC for the company Coca-Cola. We started off by gathering into our group and discussing who the Customer Segments are. We all agreed that what best describes the customer focus of Coca-Cola was 'everyone' as it is a product with such a wide spread and in the modern world almost everyone drinks it and is aware of it. Following this we talked about the Value Propositions or what the product had to offer to its customers. After thinking it over everyone in our group were happy with the main points being that it gives you energy, it's cheap, tastes good and quenches thirst. The easiest so far to come up with was the Channels by which Coke is distributed. Since it can be found everywhere from supermark...

    We decided to post any ideas we would have for a project in the #ideation channel on our slack. On Friday we met up and went through each idea, it's pros and cons. Who could we market the idea to, and most importantly how could we make money off of it.     We also did a lot of research on our favourite ideas to see our competitors in each area. As the more competitors the harder it would be to break into the market.     One of our favourite ideas, an NFC medical bracelet had unfortunately already been developed. When we found this out we were all a bit disheartened as we were almost all set on it. But thankfully this allowed us to keep developing on our other ideas, which then led us to the dual coloured ice cube indicator. A simple solution to a dangerous problem.     The scrum occured in The Hub in Áras na Mac Léinn. It was great to work together as a team and flesh out each others ideas. What's great is one person's i...

During the second class of Advanced Professional Skills we have worked on creating mind-maps within our team of a potential use of technology that could make life better for a subset of people. Our team decided to try to come up with a mind-map that could help the elderly. We started off by putting our heads together and trying to think of creative yet functional ways that a product would aid our target audience. Having came up with an idea of a 'robot companion' we went ahead and started to create the mind-map. We have decided that the 'robot companion' would need to have various features, uses  as well as aid with employability. The primary uses of the 'robot companion' would be to bring comfort, act as a translator as well as provide basic medical assistance. Due to the worlds aging population, more and more people, especially the elderly, are left alone at their homes. That not only makes them feel lonely but also increases the chance that were they in...

    On Moday 12th in our second week of classes. All teams took part in the Egg Drop Challenge. We were given string, napkins, straws, & cups. Then, told to make something to hold an egg in so when it was dropped from a window it wouldn't break.       Our solution was to put the egg inside two cups, filled with napkins in hopes that the napkins would soften the blow. Unfortunately, our contraption wasn't up for the challenge and our egg did not survive.     Working together as a team went extremely well, we all complimented each other incredibly and it was great to work together. What was most effective as a team was that we were able to build on each others ideas and discuss any possible flaws there might be in each others designs.    Our designs evolve over time to include more an more tissue paper as we believed that cushioning the egg was the way to go.        There were many leadership traits in our ...

In the article published on Wired Magazine, our team learned about the startup called Luminar. A company that focuses specifically on creating a more reliable and accurate self-driving solution. Austin Russel (left) Luminar is led by 22-year-old CEO Austin Russell, who started this company at the age of 18. Prior to this, he had been focused on the study of photonics and optics. He received funding from Pay-Pal co-founder Peter Thiel to pursue this avenue (The Peter Thiel Fellowship), while then a Stanford Undergraduate student - dropping out to work on Luminar full-time. LiDAR imaging  Austin has spent the last 4 years working on Luminar. Having watched various competitors develop cheaper and cheaper solutions, he holds a firm belief that Luminar will be more successful than the competition due to it being technologically superior. This is because with his team he has developed custom LiDAR technology (Light Detection and Ranging - an imaging process that allo...