Finally! We pitched our Piquant application in front of the whole class. After doing the pitch, we finally received the harsh feedback that we needed to reignite our thinking. A lot of the criticism stemmed from our similarities with myfitnesspal. For majority of the issues that were brought up, we thought that it was because we didn't clearly communicate our value proposition enough.
Overall we learned that we needed a better way to present that our application is more than a diet or healthplan. We found that we needed to clearly communicate the differentiation that the application was able to proved real-time recommendation.
On the engineering side, the engineers learned about built.io and figured out the backend clearly. I was really proud to see their hardwork pay off and how the three team members were able to collaborate. Walking away from this week we felt that we had a much better understanding of how to provide a better pitch and it was so exciting to finally see the product come to life.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Monday, October 20, 2014
One small step, one huge progress
After narrowing down to the health industry and exploring both the nutrition market as well as a device to help detect and alert health problems. Our team became more passionate about developing a nutrition application as it seemed more in line with our interest.
As soon as the team gathered a better sense of direction, we were able to talk more as a group and brainstorm in a more passionate level. It was as if having a more clear path allowed us to feel revitalized for the project once again. The important thing was, although we picked the type of flavor, we didn't have a set recipe or ultimate goal so our creativity was still there and we were not narrow-minded.
We began to really hammer down the logistics of a nutrition app and how we would differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Curan assigned us to look into the competitors. We also began to discuss how we would personally use the app in our daily lives. We looked into why we haven't used an application for nutrition guidance before and how we would differentiate ourselves.
As we finally understood the structure of recommending users food choice and exercise based on different health plans. The engineers set out to understand how to retrieve the data base from nutrition, meanwhile Curan and I looked into what types of features are important on the application once the data has been compiled and how we would create a true business model from the application.
As soon as the team gathered a better sense of direction, we were able to talk more as a group and brainstorm in a more passionate level. It was as if having a more clear path allowed us to feel revitalized for the project once again. The important thing was, although we picked the type of flavor, we didn't have a set recipe or ultimate goal so our creativity was still there and we were not narrow-minded.
We began to really hammer down the logistics of a nutrition app and how we would differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Curan assigned us to look into the competitors. We also began to discuss how we would personally use the app in our daily lives. We looked into why we haven't used an application for nutrition guidance before and how we would differentiate ourselves.
As we finally understood the structure of recommending users food choice and exercise based on different health plans. The engineers set out to understand how to retrieve the data base from nutrition, meanwhile Curan and I looked into what types of features are important on the application once the data has been compiled and how we would create a true business model from the application.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Brainstorm/Research Update - Health-Tech
Motion monitor-
Since the 5s, iPhone has a built in M7 Chip. Apps like Nike+ have capitalized on that, I don’t know if we can do better…Pivot to location tracker and meeting up with friends?
Target: People with large social circles.
Current apps:
FB Nearby Friends- shows the location of everyone on your fb (if they allow it). Takeaway: FB has become such a large network that many are not people you want to share your whereabouts, you have to manually select people you don’t want to know your location (opt out). Our app should start ground up, using phone numbers and adding people into your locator inbox (opt in).
Footprints- Shares location between spouse and children. Shows history of places the person has been. Takeaway: Creepy, for the demographic that we’re going for. We can alter this to almost like a timeline profile. People can choose to show certain locations in their history and share photos that they took in those locations. Additionally, rate/review restaurants, hike trips, etc?
Thoughts: Our app can add features like selecting to show if you’re free to hangout or not. Also you can insert scheduled meeting times with people, then you can see where they are 15 minutes within event start time to know where they are and estimated arrival time. Can def explore more here!
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Health Tracker-
Target: Young adults, probably urban areas. People who are health conscious and want to keep track of their intake. Large market here.
Current apps:
Health Cubby- People with the same weight goals motivate each other. Takeaway: Our app can also integrate a way to plan workout times/classes together
Restaurant Nutrition- Has nutrition info on items for over 50 restaurants. Takeaway: Our app can create this database and also do “most similar item” approach to restaurants that aren’t listed in order to get nutrition count
Resource: Livestrong.com has a large nutirtion info database of restaurants and packaged items
Thoughts: Like Curan said, out selling point may be to find a way to translate calorie count/other metrics to something that people understand more. If we are a lifestyle app, we would need to know their goal body tone type/weight, then it monitors intake, based on restaurant dishes and grocery list. Then it could be something as simple as the app suggesting, “You should go for do yoga at least twice this week,” “reduce your dessert in take this week,” or “instead of pizza night on Friday try to eat ______ (and suggest a healthy dish)”
Sunday, October 5, 2014
The Great Pivot
In class, we constantly learned about how all start-ups go through major pivots. One story that really resonated with me was the one about Ekko Device. In the class, they started as a team of five guys who wanted to create an app that stored the clothes in a person's closet and selected outfit ideas.
This week, our group began to face the same dilemma. After the teams began to present their ideas in front of the class and the questions provoked careful consideration of approaches, our group reconvened and reorganized our explorations. From last week, we have moved away from agriculture and are now beginning to look more closely at the healthcare/ wearable technology industry. Eugene, voiced his idea of a motion sensor capability that would have a notification system for when an elderly person falls. This conversation allowed us to think about the health devices and wearable tech space in general. Knowing that Apple was swiftly moving into this arena, we felt comfortable investing time in this topic. We ran across two major problems with Eugene's idea. The first was the need for hardware that detects a person's fall. The alternative would be to develop a creative way for an iPhone's motion sensor capability to understand what a falling motion would be, whether it is in a person's pocket or someone holding it. The second issue is that the prevalence of smartphone/iPhone use by elderly people is low. This made the topic a lot less attractive as the amount of people who would utilize the tool is small.
Yet, the conversation led to us to start exploring what we can do with an app to allow people's relatives or emergency systems to be notified if they are physically hurt.
On the other hand, we also discussed a nutrition monitor mobile application. We knew that there were solutions like these out there but we wanted to see if there was a way to do it better. This was the topic that excited me the most. I have learned through other classes the rise of health consciousness across the country. The important part that we wanted to note though is that calorie counting requires a very specific type of person, we wanted to be able to translate it into something a lot more meaningful to an average individual.
This week, our group began to face the same dilemma. After the teams began to present their ideas in front of the class and the questions provoked careful consideration of approaches, our group reconvened and reorganized our explorations. From last week, we have moved away from agriculture and are now beginning to look more closely at the healthcare/ wearable technology industry. Eugene, voiced his idea of a motion sensor capability that would have a notification system for when an elderly person falls. This conversation allowed us to think about the health devices and wearable tech space in general. Knowing that Apple was swiftly moving into this arena, we felt comfortable investing time in this topic. We ran across two major problems with Eugene's idea. The first was the need for hardware that detects a person's fall. The alternative would be to develop a creative way for an iPhone's motion sensor capability to understand what a falling motion would be, whether it is in a person's pocket or someone holding it. The second issue is that the prevalence of smartphone/iPhone use by elderly people is low. This made the topic a lot less attractive as the amount of people who would utilize the tool is small.
Yet, the conversation led to us to start exploring what we can do with an app to allow people's relatives or emergency systems to be notified if they are physically hurt.
On the other hand, we also discussed a nutrition monitor mobile application. We knew that there were solutions like these out there but we wanted to see if there was a way to do it better. This was the topic that excited me the most. I have learned through other classes the rise of health consciousness across the country. The important part that we wanted to note though is that calorie counting requires a very specific type of person, we wanted to be able to translate it into something a lot more meaningful to an average individual.
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