What, where, when: Weekly meeting, Demola premises, Thursday the 18th of April
On the blog today: Interface, interface, interface... and legos.

Kamil, Tomas and I started the meeting at nine, and Adnan joined us a little later. We did some scheduling related to the final pitch and went through the Card Sorting results. In a short period of time we gathered 7 participants to give us their feedback on the possible categories. Tomas gathered the results from the data to one file, and during today's meeting we were supposed to figure out names/titles for the categories. We also spent some time thinking about the logic behind the answers: In which ways are car pooling and car parking related? Maybe I should conduct some deeper interviews on the subject...

After dealing with the interface related problems we decided it was business time and brought the legos in. Janne had ordered a huge box of legos and we got to be the first ones to pla - ehm - work with them. All of us created our own piece, representing some of the ideas of the movable wall we have been designing. They're going to be used already tomorrow, when we'll have another meeting with the client. I hope Juha Kostiainen likes our visions!

P.S. more videos on our YouTube-channel!

I made a segway!

Anni



Working hours:
Adnan 3, so far 52
Anni 13,5, so far 70
Chau 0, so far 53
Kamil 3, so far 60
Tomas 7.5, so far 70 

This has been an interesting week. We have started to work on with three different areas and we also had two nice happenings at the new factory. Our project is now divided into three concepts: flexible space, engaging the neighborhood and wireless electricity. 

Last Wednesday was the day when we got a brief of what is going on all the projects in Demola. I was the pitcher for our team. I thought pitching would get easier after the one-minute pitch but I was wrong. Now there is so much more to tell about that again the time felt too short. 


My pitch is below this chapter, so go ahead and see what we think a smart home is. There were also many other interesting projects that have similar goals with ours, for example these: The Best Mobile Game Ever, Saving Green by Being Green, Urban Family Housing and Novel Solar Heating.

On Thursday Anni, Kamil and me were at this interesting event at the new factory. Michael Hardt told about many interesting points concerning design. Many of the things were related to energy efficiency so the event was especially interesting for us. We were also happy to have a change to tell him a few words about our ideas about smart housing. It was nice to hear that he thought we are on the right track. 

Anni and I are going to work on with the touch screen interface for controlling the smart home and being active in the neighborhood. The next step is to do some card sorting and create more interface mockups based on the results. Card sorting is a simple method for finding out how the users would categorize the different features we want to include in the system.

We will work with Balsamiq for the interface mockups. Depending of how well we proceed with the mockups, we will do some usability tests with the prototypes, hopefully already during next week. We will need 3-5 participants, so if you are interested, please contact me. 

Adnan is the master of electric thing so he will continue his research about wireless electricity and Kamil and Chau will work on with flexible space. 

You all have a home, so you all have an opinion about living in one. Please comment our posts, it will be really valuable for us. 

Here is also a link to the Prezi-presentation used in the mid-pitch.

- Tomas


Working hours:
Adnan 10, so far 49
Anni 12 so far 56,5
Chau 4,5, so far 53
Kamil 8, so far 57
Tomas 27,5, so far 70

What, where, when: Weekly meeting, Demola premises, Thursday the 4th of April
On the blog today: Interface design and stressing about the mid-pitch!

Thursday's weekly meeting was a little shorter this time: Chau and Kamil had obligations elsewhere, so me and Thomas started the meeting at nine, and Adnan joined us at ten.

Me and Tomas had prepared some drafts of the interface since the last meeting, and we spent the first hour comparing the pros and cons of the designs. At then o'clock we decided to leave the subject for now and continue with it later during the project, because we really had to concentrate on the mid-pitch.

We decided some essential parts: who's going to talk, what are we going to show the audience, with what electrical appliances are we going to present it and what will be the main idea. After talking to Janne we also decided to go with the NABC model, as previously. Janne gave us some tips on the pitch - the main thing is to show the value of our ideas to our client and the future customers. Based on the tips we went through some notes from the project plan review meeting, and thought of the value to the client. We determined the values to
1. Flexible space
2. Energy effiency and its gamification
3. Developing and improving communities

So, these are the things you will be seeing in the mid-pitch on Wednesday. And of course the concrete ideas we have that we haven't yet presented on the blog! Don't worry, that will be taken care of after the mid-pitch.

So, Demola, Wednesday the 10th, 4pm. Be there, or be square!

Anni

Working hours:
Adnan 16, so far 39
Anni 8,5, so far 44,5
Chau 18,5, so far 48,5
Kamil 0, so far 49
Tomas 4, so far 42,5

I've spent the last three hours working with Balsamiq, and I'm thrilled! Tomorrow in the meeting we'll share our thoughts on the interface (and the program!). I decided to share a little sneak peek of my sketches with you.

More coming tomorrow!

Anni

Our project has started for over 1 month and our hardworking results in tons of ideas. I hope you guys follow our blog and give us your comments.
Check our youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/LiveSmarterDemola?feature=watch

We have some time-lapsed videos about how we work together. It is very fresh and amazing while working in the open and spontaneous workspace of Demola New Factory. Besides, our group members also attended in some related workshops about Value Creation, Design Workshop or Productification. All of these activities enrich our personal working skill for a cross-disciplinary project. 

One week after the Easter holiday, on 10th April, the mid-pitch will be held in Demola New Factory. Hope you guys can join and support our team. We still keep working through internet during Easter. There you can find us very outstanding with the strong message: Let's live smarter!

Finally, we have a logo for our project and then our team T-shirt < the size and colour are still in the progress>. Hopefully, this logo and branding strategy are also included in our business plan how to make people familiar with the concept of smart living.

Give me feedback about the logo and T-shirts. Follow us. We will update our works onward.

Our logo: LIVESMARTER in multi-faceted shapes. It reflects the complexity of the term "Smart living" or "Digital living". The blue colour is derived from the identity of YIT logo.

And now, the T-shirt : White colour?

I think the black colour is almost our final choice

- Chau -

What, where, when: Project plan review meeting, Demola, Wednesday the 27th
On the blog today: The fruits of our labor so far and how YIT felt about them!

On Wednesday morning me, Chau, Tomas and Kamil met in Demola at about 9.30 to prepare for the project plan review meeting. Somewhere around 10 our facilitator Janne welcomed us to the meeting room, where we greeted our teachers, Timo Poranen from UTA and Marko Seppänen from TUT. Soon after we met, for the first time in person, Juha Kostiainen from YIT.
I was quite nervous and excited to begin the meeting, and found out afterwards I wasn't the only one - I'm glad Janne is always so relaxed, it really lightens up the mood!

The meeting itself went very well in my opinion. We got exactly the kind of feedback we needed. It was encouraging yet instructive. I feel we got a good idea of how the client feels about our ideas. Juha also gave us some valuable tips on his thoughts about in which direction we should aim with the ideas.

We were encouraged to think about the social value and think of more completely new concepts. I'm feeling confident that we can do it. Janne and our teachers also gave us some valuable feedback, and based on their comments we decided to start making more detailed backlogs of our meetings.

On our team meeting after the project plan review meeting we discussed our pesonal and overall goals of the project - what the project is going to be in the end and what will make it succesfull. Because of the morning meeting we were now able to discuss the next steps of the project.

Timo Poranen helped us quite a bit by providing us with a licence to Balsamiq - a cool tool on interface design. Can't wait to see what we'll make with it - you'll see it on the blog later! After the official team meeting me and Tomas stayed for a while to start with the design on a more traditional (or not) manner. These tables are so darn handy!

The mid-pitch will be quite a task for us because of the holidays. We do however have some nice ideas for that, too. Janne already helped us by providing us with hundreds of pieces of Legos. You'll definitely want to see what we'll come up with! Here's a little teaser in the form of a picture.

Working hours: Adnan 4, so far 23 | Anni 8, so far 36 | Chau 3, so far 30 | Kamil 18,5, so far 49 |Tomas 18, so far 38,5.

Anni

What, where, when:
Building stuff out of playdough in the Demola premises, Thursday the 21st.
On the blog today: Playdough, desperate search for value creation and cool pics!

Another meeting at Demola, this time the whole team present. Adnan had prepared some graphs on cost effectiness, value, and benefits for the customers based on our online mindmap.

On Tuesday March 12th we had a Pitching event in Demola New Factory. To squeeze your project into a one-minute presentation took surprisingly much preparing. In the video you can see how Tomas managed to do that. To clarify the mumbling, the pitch is also in text format below the video. All pitches followed the NABC-model (=Need, Approach, Benefit, Competition).

Suppose you were selling your stupid apartment. I wouldn't buy it!   

Why, because I want a house that is more secure to my family, more eco-efficient and that helps me and my neighbours to become a community.  

We will design a home with sensors that keep track off the energy consumption, the healthyness of the structures and it provides security. Those are combined with a networking interface for you and your neighbors.

Then, you can save money and be social and feel secure.

The challenge in smart housing is changing peoples mind sets from traditional housing. Our solution will make this mainstream and when it is implemented in your house, I would like to buy it, but you wouldn't like to sell it anymore.  

Please share your thoughts about smart housing for example by commenting this blog entry. Thank you.

Tomas.

Where, when, what:
Demola premises, Thursday the 14th, meeting and megalomaniac ideas!
On the blog today the results of our meeting: discussing the first pitch, the mid-pitch, quality issues, some brainstorming and a not-so-traditional questionnaire.

Another meeting with the team.  On a Thursday morning we sat comfortably around our soon-to-be regular table at Demola, and had the second official team meeting. The burning subject was of course the pitch last Tuesday - on which we congratulated Tomas (a post on the pitch coming soon - along with some footage on-scene!).

The first pitch may be over, but the mid-pitch keeps getting closer and closer, and that was one of the main topics of the meeting. We decided to go with, as Kamil expressed it in the meeting report: "a flashy mid-pitch with some nice and catchy call-for-action". We've got some cool ideas to charm the audience with, but that's a matter for a whole another blog entry.

Chau came up with an idea that has been succesfully used in Chicago, San Jose, Memphis and New York based on the easiness of post-its! The fashion of the questionnaire is easy to approach for a person who has something to say about the matter but wouldn't necessarily fill out a traditional on paper printed questionnaire. Also I think we can get some information from the right audience for our project using this way of polling. How would you react to a poll like this?
Picture credit and more information: http://www.giveaminute.info/

Along with other things, we discussed some publicity and contact matters. We talked a little about the blog and the level of officiality we aim for, and decided to set up a Youtube account for the pitches and other videos. Contact with the project partner will be vital before the mid-pitch, and we're looking forward to it, especially after the brainstorming today, I really have the feeling we're on to something here.

- Anni