Week 4 - Defining customer requirements and existing solutions

Week 4

Once we had decided to develop our "AirBnB" solution, it was time to investigate the current solutions worldwide and start to look for possible interviewees. We wanted to find especially current EV owners, but also interview car owners who do not find owning an EV usefull at the moment.  Furthermore, it was very interesting to notice that for example in Sweden, one company has launched lately a service called "ElBnb" that uses somewhat similar concept we had thought.

  
Picture 4: A picture of Elbnb's user interface 

On Thursday we had a meeting where we discussed about the preferred outcome of the project and dealt responsibilities for next week. The meeting was very efficient and we reached agreement about the content fast.

We found four different parts of the project we have to take into account 

1) Background
      - Current situation of EV charging
      - Problems
2) Requirements
      - End users
      - Customers and stakeholders
3) Solution
      - Functionalities
      - Value Proposition
      - Business plan
      - Prototype
4) Launching plan
      - How to make our solution "nationwide"

Our responsibilities for week 5 were as followed:

Matias: Background study
Jani: Questionnaire for non-EV users
Linda: Elnbn and other current solutions
Väinö & Juuso: Car manufacturers

All: To find EV owners and get familiar with the topic!

We will meet propably on Thursday and find out what each of us has done during the week.

Until then, see you!

Week 3 - The working structure

Week 3 - The working structure

At the beginning of the week, we were eager to get our hands finally dirty and get started with the actual content. However, we quickly realised that we should structurise our work more. Luckily in terms of the course, this weeks agenda dealt with the working structure! So it was time to stop for a moment and brainstorm, what we are actually going to do and especially when. Our course staff provided the necessary questions we should answer in our working plan and we divided them between our group.

The time schedule of the course is quite strict so it definetely was a good idea to schedule rest of the course on the weekly basis. Furthermore, we were able to put other of our thoughts on the paper. It is interesting to see, if we are able to stick with the plan. At least there is some usual content for Matias as a group leader to monitor :)

Our working strucute is available for everyone in google drive:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7NQRBaZsxycWkZMaTFsVV80ek0/view?usp=sharing

On Friday we had a short meeting after the lectures and made plans for the next week. Unfortunately the next possible time to meet is on next Thursday. However, all the group members seem to be motivated towards our goals. As far as I concern, we understand the problem quite well. Furthermore, we now have on paper the direction we want to move on and the next steps we are willing to take. 






Picture 3: Upcoming milestones

Next step is the get more actual content and begin to investigate the customer needs related to the topic (EV parking). 

Week 2 - Defining the objectives and direction

Since many of the stakeholders of our project appeared to prefer english, we have switched the language to English. I have also translated the description and the first blog post.

WEEK 2

Since the messy background of all kind of problems related to charging the electrical vehicles on the road had become more clear, the beginning of the week was all about defining our objectives and the direction we wanted to move on. The ultimate goal of the EU-project our substance advisors are in, is to create an user-friendly and complete ecosystem that would contain all the commercial charging poles and all the big players in a single system.  However, the need for this kind of solution has been out there for quite a long time and no perfect solution have occured so far. Thus, we wanted to think a little bit differently and rely more on crowdsourcing.

The idea of an "airbnb" - liked service for electrical vehicles came to light in our meeting on Tuesday. We had investigated the current markets as group and each of us agreed there could be market potential for this kind of new service. We sent the description of our idea to the contact person Kary Främling who approved it. The first smart parking group decided to focus more on the existing situation including players like Fortum and Virta which meant both groups will have their own scope and objectives.

On Thursday we had a meeting with our contact persons Kary and Andrea, smart parking group 1 and  Natalia from Forum Virium. Natalia described the current situation thoroughly and gave many great examples of similar projects. Andrea and Kary encouraged us to take also other crowdsourcing and shared-economy opportunities (like shared EV-cars) into account which our group felt usefull. We also discussed about the final solution. Could it be for example a start-up idea? Or should we concentrate on finding an universal answer how EV charging could be done?

The last part of our efficient week was the workshop with course staff and other groups. We held a small presentation and discussed about state of the project.

Picture 2: Group members in the meeting 
 
The outcome of the week 2 was, that our objective is to find a entirely new and complete solution on EV charging, that is based on crowdsourcing and shared-economy. A preferred solution would be an app that is based on the concept we will develop. 

Now it is time to get our hands dirty and get the project going - see you next week!