The following document researches different types of business structures and explains what sort of business structure is best for our company. It is important to select the correct type of business because it affects the amount of tax the business pays, the amount of paperwork you have to do and rather importantly, personal financial liability.

Lightscape – Business Structure (PDF)

I have been racking my brains about this project and thought of a couple basic ideas on what we could do.

I did a similar project about Augmented reality last year – Called the Augmented Reality Tour Guide.

This was a prototype of a history/tour guide, using an Iphone at Plymouth Hoe. The idea was you scan the area with your Iphone and it overlays historic photos on top of the real time landmarks. My prototype presentation video is here if you want to look!

http://lukebest.co.uk/idat204-artourguide/final.swf

Anyway, back to this project – the brief states:

“You will develop prototypes set in a digital IoT ecosystem where sociality is extended from people to space that actively contribute to the increase of knowledge and creativity, through their everyday interaction. This needs to embed and reveal the immaterial aspects and imformation in the space, past present and future.”

Bearing this in mind here are my initial ideas;

1. A real life Facebook/Online messaging system in the Devonport area – (Devonbook as a cheesy working name)

Possibly using the Layars AR technology – the idea would be to create virtual message boards or comments attached to buildings in Devonport. A participating building has its own thread and QR code outside and you scan it join it and leave comments. This could integrate with social media to keep you updated when other people comment on the building. This would after a while create an online diary or timeline about what the people in the area think. Given time, you could also scroll through comments history to see comments about what was there years ago and what people said about it.

The message board/comments box would appear as an overlay on a real time video feed from a smart phone.

2. Devonport ‘Mood walls’

These walls would simply be walls covered in LED lights, with 2 QR codes at either side. The one on the left is inside a big thumbs up, and the one on the right inside a thumbs down. You simply scan whichever one you want depending on if you are enjoying your time in Devonport and the board changes colour depending on the total number of likes and dislikes, reflecting the happiness of people travelling through the space.

I’m not really sure If I’m missing the mark on this, as the brief is quite open. We are going to Devonport in our new groups on Friday so we will bounce a few ideas around !

The aim of this project is to see how we interact and use the space in an area or building and think about how digital objects can inhabit and embed in the empty or immaterial space. It is the link between the digital space/information and the physical.

We are now living in a world where the digital fabric is overlaying a physical environment with things like Wifi, Bluetooth, Augmented Reality and QR codes. I am interested in the area of Augmented Reality on which I did a project last year. My project was at Plymouth Hoe and involved using the Iphone to scan the environment and overlay historic photos on the modern buildings in real time and provide historical infomration about them.

We are going to be doing a project with the Architect students using technology to change the way we use the space in the area of Devonport, that brings together the community in some way and bridges the gap between digital immaterial and the physical material.

However, that’s getting ahead of ourselves, todays session was all about getting to grips with a few technologies we could potentially use in Devonport.

We looked at the following technologies:

Stickybits  is a QR Code scanning service, where you can print and scan QR codes to reveal more information about it

www.stickybits.com

Layar – A really cool Augmented Reality platform.

www.layar.com 

Tales of Things – Which is basically a service that allows you to link any type of media with an object by printing out QR codes and sticking it to the object – a simple but very cool idea!

www.talesofthings.com

Our task today was to use Stickybits to play a modified version of Hide and Seek.

We split into groups and were asked to draw some monsters on paper, photograph them and upload them to the Stickybits service. Using Stickybits we would then print out its unique QR code and hide them anywhere within the University Campus for our teammates to find.

We gave our teammates clues to the QR codes whereabouts. Once they had found the QR code – they had to scan it with a Smartphone or Ipad to reveal the Monster and our hidden message!

This was a great excercise and showed us what possibilities there were in ways of using this technology. With simply a large space and the QR codes we were able to turn the University Campus into a Playground – interacting and looking at the space in a totally different way. This is what we want to achieve with our project.

Group: Rob Hart, Garry Barter, Luke Best

Just as a quick overview, Lightscape offers a service to Photographers, by offering their clients a unique way to view and share their images of a special day.

It is a service add on to professional photographers and their clients whereby they can upload their images, encourage their clients to do the same and comment and build a story of events around it. This will be done via a website as the main marketing to show examples to others what it’s all about and how they can benefit form this service over examples from Facebook and Flickr.

We will be meeting up in the next session to discuss our business roles and get started on the product.

VC Resource Database (xlsx – Excel format)

VC Resource Database (PDF format)

#1 Try My UI

Web: http://www.trymyui.com/site/home

Overview:

Try my UI is a company offering a very similar service as Toughtest but in a different way.

The users rate the websites from 1 to 5 and fill out a questionnaire and record a video with audio of them using the site.

Strengths

• Nice branding
• Simple to use
• Big brand affiliates
• Bulk pricing

Weaknesses

• High price for each test
• Only receive a video and questionnaire.
• No further feedback after initial test
• No coding suggestions for fixing

Summary

This website will be the main competitor for Toughtest.

Its tested websites include some big names including Ebay, Amazon and Facebook which they proudly display on their homepage. This credibility will be hard for Toughtest to match at first as Try my UI is already a well established player in the market.

Try my UI offers good testing facilities and decent feedback for testers, but I think the limited feedback, lack of follow up feedback and high cost will put customers off.

#2 Feedback Army

Web: http://www.feedbackarmy.com/

Overview:

Feedback Army is a simple and cheap way of getting your website tested for usability.

Users fill out a testing form, pay a set amount depending on how many testers they would like and then wait for their written results.

Strengths:

• Very simple process
• Self quality controlled – Users can reject a test result if they think it’s not up to their standard (However – this could be bad for revenue and is hard to administer)

Weaknesses

• Each test can only have 4-6 questions
• Testers cannot be sorted by experience, expertise or rating
• Feedback is limited to text only (No video or audio)
• 70% of testers are based in the US meaning sites based in certain countries may be excluded
• Testers aren’t paid much and their results can be deleted – meaning it’s a hard life for testers!

Summary

While Feedback army is a very simple service, I feel it is very limited in its testing aspects and even more limited in its user base, where users are only taken from 4 countries and 70% of the testers are based in the US.

You can have a maximum of 6 questions to users and the price brackets are limited to 10 tests for $20, 25 tests for $40 and 50 testers for $75.

For these reasons I don’t think Feedback Army will be realistic competition for Toughtest.

#3 – Minds Eye Design (Local Company)

Web:  http://www.mindseyedesign.co.uk/website-hosting-and-email-company-in-cornwall/website-usability-testing-design-company-in-cornwall/

As my business is going to be online based it does not matter a great deal where the company is located. However, it is worth looking at competitors locally to see how the business could fair starting in our location.

I have found one in the UK that is in actual fact based in Cornwall, where I live!

It is not strictly a testing service but a website design company offering usability testing as one of their services.

Each test is carried out by one person on a quote basis.

Strengths:

• Website tested by industry professional
• Technical feedback is offered to help fix issues
• Comprehensive report and video at end of test
• One to one further feedback after initial test

Weaknesses

• Website only tested by a single person – no good if you want something tested by a non technical user
• High price for a single test – what may come as simple to one person may be confusing for others

Summary

This is an interesting local company and it would be good to interview them to find out how well their usability tests do in practise and what the market is like.

I do not feel that these will be a competitor for Toughtest as the results will be very different from what Toughtest can offer.

The feedback is from a single person only so tests will only receive one person’s opinion. However you do get technical feedback and help which is a big plus point.

The points of each pitch I would like to cover and compare are:

• Timing – Did it last the full length? Cover everything? Go over? Too short? Why?  – Not enough time spent rehearsing, better to throw away the script,
• Comprehensiveness – Did I include everything? Was anything left out?
• Impression – Did the product come across as worthwhile? Was I confident? Could the audience relate to the product? Did I give right impression?
• Body language – Did I engage the audience well? Eye contact, positioning. Hand movements.
• Q&A – Was there much feedback? If so, how well did I deal with unexpected questioning about the product and was I able to explain well enough to satisfy the audience.

I will start with the first 2 minute pitch.

2 Minute pitch

I feel my first pitch went well in general, but could have been a lot better.

Timing

My timing was ok. The pitch lasted for roughly 1 minute 25 seconds so I did not make full use of the 2 minutes I had. I did not have any visual aids so I ended up forgetting a lot of what I intended to say due to nerves! I feel I got the basics across fairly well but as you can see from the video there is around 7 minutes of Q&A with the audience.

In the future I think I would do better with some kind of visual aid so I don’t forget anything and can make full use of the 2 minutes.

Comprehensiveness

I feel my pitch was quite concise, provided a background story and solution to a problem and a bit of detail about how it would work. I feel people understood the product at a basic level and that is what I had hoped to achieve.

Impression

I feel I gave a good impression and people were impressed by my business. I was not very confident in speaking but due to the strength of the product and idea luckily I do not think it had any negative effect on my pitch.

I think my strengths in this presentation are more in the quality and content of the idea rather than my skills in explaining it, although I did a decent job of explaining everything. This is something I hope improves in the next pitch.

Body Language

In terms of my engagement and interaction, I do not feel I am a natural speaker when it comes to large groups so I could improve on this by making a bit more eye contact with the group.

My body language I felt was quite static but not unnatural. I had nerves as you would expect and noticed that I fiddle with my hands quite a bit! I don’t think this had a negative effect though and I still used my body well to explain things.

One thing I would like to avoid doing next time though is putting my hands in my pockets afterwards as this doesn’t look very professional.

Questions and Answers

I had around 7 minutes of questions and answers from the audience. While this seems a long time I don’t think this was because the audience did not understand the product but more that they were interested and wanted to know more in depth information about how the system worked.

This could be seen as a sign that I did not cover all my points well enough but I see this as a good sign rather than bad due to the fact people were asking mostly about fine details of the system and giving me suggestions on how to improve it.

Overall strengths:

I feel I kept the audience quite engaged and explained the business fairly well considering the amount of time we had. I was pleased my body language and interaction with the group and felt it was a decent start.

Weaknesses:

Because my business idea is quite complex and I only had 2minutes, it left a lot of questions about how the system worked and people were asking more in depth questions about how the site operates. There was a question about the credits which I believed I touched on but this was obviously not in depth enough, so to improve this I should have spent more time writing short, concise statements about every area of the business, rather than explaining one area in good detail and skimping on others.

This could be improved by spending more time refining my statements.

In conclusion

My idea was quite complex so I had a lot of questions after the pitch so in future I need to make sure that more of the technical aspects of the business are covered.

I think my pitch was a bit on the short side and I did not use the time allocated to its full potential.

My pitch was generally well received and I look forward to improving on these points in the next one.

Timing

I was disappointed with my timing as my pitch overran by roughly 1 minute 35 seconds.

In comparison to the 2 minute pitch where I ran under the allocated time and had 30 seconds to spare, I made sure to rehearse more the second time around and felt I should take longer to explain things.

However when nerves took over I found myself over explaining certain things and forgetting about others. I feel I tried to include perhaps too much information costs and feel I could have dropped a bit about the income projections and left that to the Q&A if anybody asked.

Comprehensiveness

I feel the content of my presentation was the main strength of my 5 minute pitch and a lot better than the first. I spent a lot of time on my slideshow visuals and was sure to include as much information as I could plausibly fit into a 5 minute talk. There were no questions after my presentation which is a good indication that my business was well understood and I had covered everything.

Impression

I feel that thanks to my in depth presentation, I gave a good impression that I had confidence and knowledge about the product, its competitors and how it will work.

I feel I gave a positive feeling which then gave the audience confidence in the business.

Body Language

Surprisingly, I fail to make as much eye contact and am less engaged with the audience in the 2nd pitch. I feel this is because I had a lot to think about and explain whilst feeling the pressure of keeping within the time limit.

Looking back at the video I also seem to be looking at the slideshow a lot. I tried in vain to prevent this but I ended up using the slideshow as my prompts when instead I really should of known it all off by heart.

This is the one area I am disappointed I did not improve upon during the two pitches.

Questions and Answers

I did not have any questions about the business at the end of my pitch, so I am not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing!

I would say this is good because everyone was satisfied that I had covered all possible areas of the business and they understood everything fully.

Overall strengths:

My presentation was good and the visuals carried me through the pitch. I covered everything well and feel I gave a good impression that my business is to be taken seriously.

Weaknesses:

I felt my 5 minute pitch was a little rushed, as I felt that 5 minutes was not really enough time to comprehensively explain all the aspects of the business, the product, how it works, the audience, the setup, the costs, revenue, methods of distribution etc.

This reflects in my speech as I talk quickly and don’t really the audience time to think over what has just been said.

In conclusion

From the two pitches I have learnt that I should spend more time rehearsing my speech the 2 minute pitch ran under and the 5 minute went a bit over, so this shows I am not great at keeping in time when speaking in front of people.

In trying to cover everything in my presentation I think I ended up trying to cram too much information into to short of a space and it was a little rushed.

If I were to do it again I would not go so in depth and try to spend only a few sentences on each aspect of the business.

I think that by using prompt cards in future it would help me present with more structure I don’t forget anything.

I think another one of my weaknesses in presenting is confidence so I am pleased I spent time on my visual presentation to help me improve the overall presentation to make up for those shortcomings from the first pitch.

My main strength was content and quality of the business and I am happy that this seems to of come across well in both pitches.

Here is my 5 minute pitch video ! I think it went quite well and there were no questions at the end so I think I was quite comprehensive in my pitch.

Full summary to follow!

We are going to be comparing the 2 pitches we did earlier in the term.

Here is a link to my presentation (Done in Powerpoint) which I will use for my 5 minute pitch in 2 different formats;

vc_presentation.pptx - (Powerpoint presentation)
vc_presentation.pdf - (PDF)

In this pitch I need to be clear and concise in trying to cover everything in a short space of time, so I have included the main points about the business as follows;

1. Tagline and  overview of product
2. Description of the problem and solution that my product aims to solve
3. How it will do this
4. How it is different
5. The users/target audience of the product
6. How the product works for all participants
7. Set up and on-going costs
8. Methods of generating revenue
9. Return of investment
10. Income projections
11. Distribution