Week 12 - Wrap up of the course

EDIT:

The course staff asked us to include the poster, report and prototype to our blog. So here they are:

Poster:

Available as PDF: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4tDou44Z6x7Z0Z3Q1VvbTZRaW8

Report:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4tDou44Z6x7c0tZVE9QNnlCQVk

Prototype:

Available as apk-file in https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4tDou44Z6x7S3RjMDhhN01rRWs

Please use mobile phone to open the link and test the app.

Week 12

After the Grande finale it was time to took a deep breath and spent a while reading to exams. On Wednesday Matias finally broke up the silence and we started to write the final report as a group. In order to support the ideation process, Matias suggested to check the instructions that were sent by the course staff and he also urged everyone to check the form in mycourses. We dealt the responsibilities and the deadline was set to be 12pm on Friday.

On Friday afternoon it was nice to see at this point of the course that everyone did their part in time. When it comes to individual parts in the final report, everybody seemed to be satisfied with the course and the outcome we produced.

In short, the course was all together a success. We all learned a lot about electric cars and their infrastructure. It was especially pleasing to see that our idea was also executed by Elbnb during the course. We all think that it was useful to work in a cross disciplinary group, where nobody knew each other before the course. In addition we think that every group member learned about their area of responsibility, for example Matias about leading a group, Linda coding and app and Juuso doing a poster.

We want to thank all the stakeholders, course staff, interviewees and all the people that were involved to this project. We wish everybody a pleasant holiday. Maybe one day, our idea will actually see the light.. :)

- Team RuutuaEtsimassa

Week 11 - The grande finale

Week 11

At the end of the week 11, it was finally time for the grande finale. All the work we have done would culminate to one single 3 minute presentation and a poster. However, as the so called dress rehearsal went very well, we felt quite confident at the beginning of the week.

We all did our parts individually but we wanted to wait the feedback from Tuomo before making any major changes together. Once again Tuomo called our group leader Matias very promptly on Tuesday exactly at 12pm and gave some useful insight. The issues Tuomo recommended us to consider were as followed.

1) More excitement to presentation
2) More visual slides
3) Use our numbers and refer to sources we have used
4) Try to bring our concept and use of the app somehow together.

Points 1-3 were adopted straight away. Väinö promised to do new slides that turned out to be great. We rehearsed a few more times together and tried to be more excited and proud about what we have accomplished. Matias also made some minor changes to his part in order to include some key facts for example about the survey process.

Nevertheless, the fourth part was more difficult. We thought about different ways to unify our presentation. It proved to be that difficult that we had to abandon it. It was already Wednesday, our presentation was very fluent and we had no clear vision how to do it so we decided to stick with the old presentation. We had to just do it in more amazing way. In addition, in Presemo we got feedback that all the different names we used in dress rehearsal (group, project, app) were really confusing. Thus, we determined to use the name of our product, ParkIt, in every context.

The actual grande finale was only a very part of the job. Of course by far the most important one, but we had been practicing so much, that we just went to the stage and did everything as many times before. Juuso also made a really cool poster, that really stand out visually. All together, everything went really well and we were really pleased about what we achieved.

Our group presenting in the Grande finale

The event itself was a success. It was nice to visit all the stands and see what others have been doing, even though we had seen the presentations before once. It just felt sort of a festive occasion with the speak-up speaches from Stina, all the fuss, stands, microphones etc. that it was nice to took part.

At the end I have to admit this all feels a bit empty. First we did not even know each other, then we did this stuff together for weeks.. and now it is just over and everybody goes to their own direction.. Still, it was nice to work in group with many different backgrounds and many different skills. I hope that is visible considering the result as well.

There is still one week to go, when we will wrap up the course. So see you one more time!

Week 10 - Dress rehearsal

Week 10

Phuuuh... It is quite difficult to believe it is already week 10. Most of the actual work is done, now it is just time to present to all the others what we have done.

As been said, we had a clear vision what to present. Once again, we wanted to trust on each other so we practiced the divided parts on our own. We even wrote some of our lines to Google Drive, so all the others could see word by word what we were going to say. We also clocked all the parts in order to stay under the 3 minute deadline in the rehearsal.

Visually, we were pretty satisfied with our old slides so we planned to use them at least in the dress rehearsal. We finally came up a name to our app, ParkIt that is. Jani took some new screenshots to be used in the presentation. Otherwise, the beginning of the week was all Slush. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday... yep, Slush! However, I guess it was not that bad idea to see some pitches.

In Slush, the startups had a slightly longer time to present but the situation is more or less the same. It was surprising how many things the best acts could include in a such a short time. In addition it was great to see all the group members once in a so called unofficial environment.

The Slush afterparty was epic whereas the wake-up in the next Friday morning was... well, not. However, we had no choice but to clear our throats and came to school early. We did the final touches and went through the presentation one more time before entering the hall. Fortunately the adrenaline boost wiped away the fatigue and the presentation went as planned. We were very pleased to see that other groups gave also positive feedback in Presemo.

Week 9 - Finishing the three P's (Presentation, Prototype, Poster)

Week 9

NOTE: REPOSTED 6th of December, while the picture was not visible for some reason

Week 9 was about finishing the 3 P's: Poster, Presentation and Prototype. Especially the presentation and the prototype had a tight deadline, since we wanted them to be 100% ready before the final practice on 2nd of December.

We discussed within our group about the presentation on week 8. We noticed that the concept was not 100% ready and clear as we were not able to give sufficient answer to all of the questions from audience. Especially the identification process was a crucial part of that. Also the lack of enthusiasm and storytelling were seen as problems.

Thus, Matias had one more meeting with Virta connect person who told about the RFI tags. She claimed that even most of the home chargers have a modem and a SIM so that identification with a tag would be feasible. We believed our expert and decided to use that technology as part of our process. Väinö also had a great idea about storytelling: We could describe the problems of both EV and charger owners and showcase how our app solves this problem and connect those consumers.

Our interviewee introduced how the clients use the Virta app. We decided to include the RFI tag.


We decided together the core frame of our presentation in our meeting as well. Väinö and Jani will do the storytelling and Matias rest of the 3 minute presentation. After the storytelling Matias will first tell about the concept, then show how our app works and the last slide will present in a nutshell why you should believe in our idea. Linda will continue working with the prototype and Väinö will do the poster. The course staff showed us a very good example of a great poster and we will definitely use that as a reference. Otherwise we will give free hands to Juuso, since he knows our concept and does that kind of things at work as well. We know it is going to be visually very spectacular!