Category: Class Sessions

The Elevator Pitch

Announcements

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review your Design Notebooks from last week.

The Elevator Pitch

What’s an “elevator pitch”?

According to Wikipedia, an elevator pitch is:

A short summary used…

to quickly… (approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes)

and simply… (as succinctly, as possible)

define a process, product, service, organization, or event and it’s value proposition.

The value proposition is how your project will solve your users’ problem and what the value of that solution is.

For example, if your project is to create an app that gamifies saving energy in homes in underserved communities, your value proposition might be:

“to save X% on your energy bills – money which can go toward savings, food, clothing, healthcare, or rent – all while reducing the community’s carbon footprint.”

You might also do the math and show exactly how much food or clothing could be purchased with the savings – sort of like a verbal infographic.

Here’s the formula:

State the problem, state the solution, state the reward.

Problem

Start by stating the problem your project will be solving. Try to create a hook that will link the problem to something your pitch audience is already familiar with like “You know how some neighborhoods just don’t have any grocery stores with fresh produce? Some call them food deserts.”

Solution

After stating the problem your project will address, state your solution, and how it’s different from other solutions that might be out there. For example; “Well, our app helps combat food deserts by identifying profitable drop points for local farmers in underserved communities”.

Reward

Finally, state the specific reward users will receive for using your solution. It could be monetary, social, time, etc, for example; “That way, farmers are finding new profitable markets and people who didn’t have access to fresh produce now do – they can even use their SNAP cards so they don’t have to pay out-of-pocket.”

Assignment

Trenton Challenges

  • With your team, review your notes on the issues and concerns presented by the Trenton Community representatives in class today
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebooks, title it “Community Issue” and identify the issue your team finds most compelling
  • Create a second slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Elevator Pitch”
  • Together, write out your team’s elevator pitch for a solution concept based on the community issue your team chose
  • Your team should work together on this, but each of you should create your own copies of the slides and put them in your individual Design Notebooks

Knight News Challenge Entries

  • Review how the Knight News Challenge Platform works
  • Review the projects entered so far in the Knight News Challenge
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Challenge Entries”
  • Pick one or two entries that appeal to you most.
  • Write a brief description of each, with a link to each entry url
  • Come to class ready to discuss the entries already in the Challenge

Personal Data for Good

  • Read Exploring Personal Data for Public Good Research
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebooks
  • Who are the three key stakeholder groups for personal health data applications discussed in the article?
  • What are the stakeholder interests that must line up for personal health data research to be successful?

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post a comment on this page (The Elevator Pitch), including a link to your Design Notebook.

Challenges in Trenton

Announcements

  • Trenton Stakeholders Meeting next Monday, September 14th
  • Need cell phone numbers from everyone

Design Notebooks

Let’s review some of your Design Notebook entries from last week.

Teams

Let’s organize into teams.

We’ll start by creating a quick survey in TCNJ’s Qualtrics Survey tool, which you should get free access to as students at TCNJ.

  • In Qualtrics, we’ll create a couple of questions, beginning with a “Text Entry” question for your name
  • Next we’ll create a “Matrix” Question for each of you to self assess your skills along a number of multimedia disciplines including graphic design, web design, games programming, writing and animation/film
  • Finally we’ll publish our survey

Now, point your browser to the survey web url and take the survey.

Break

Let’s take a short break so I can assess the survey results When we come back, we’ll group up into teams.

Challenges in Trenton

Trenton Demographics

Trenton 250

Potential Partners

Exercise

  • If we haven’t already done so, break up into your teams teams
  • Review the sites of our partner organizations
  • Review the SWOC Analysis and Demographics from the Trenton 250 website linked to above.
  • Brainstorm a few interactive multimedia concepts that might assist in addressing some of the opportunities outlined in the analysis.

Assignment

Trenton Challenges

  • Read the Trenton 250 Vision Element
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and label it “Guiding Principles”
  • List the 8 guiding principles outlined in the Trenton 250 Vision Element
  • Write a paragraph discussing one of these principles in more detail
  • What kinds of data could you use to help address your chosen principle?

Working In Teams

  • Read Chapter 10, “Working with Others” in Design is a Job
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Working in a Team”
  • Based on the reading, summarize the author’s advice about working in a team environment.

1st Day of Class

Announcements

  • Class meets next week on Tuesday, September 8.

Intros

Let go around the room and introduce ourselves; state your name, your year, your focus (game design, animation, web or mobile development, etc) and what you hope to get out of the class.

Class Overview

  • What is design?
  • How do you go about “designing” something?
  • What about user-centered design?
  • What’s Open Data?
  • Trenton
  • The Knight News Challenge

Syllabus

Let’s review the syllabus.

Assignment

  • Log into Google Drive and create a new presentation, title it “Design Notebook”

Useful data for building communities

  • Read the Knight News Challenge Brief
  • Look over the Isles, Inc. website; be sure to look over the “About”, “I Want To…” and “Learn About” menus.
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Useful data for building communities”.
  • Consider the following quote from the challenge:  “We believe that data can unlock useful information and that information is key to stronger, more knowledgeable communities.”  
  • Write a paragraph or two describing what kind of data you believe would be useful to helping Isles with their mission to “foster self-reliant families and healthy, sustainable communities”? How could you collect that data? Where might you be able to find already existing data about communities in Trenton and New Jersey?

Contextual Awareness

  • Read Why contextual awareness is about to change the way you use tech.
  • Create another slide in your Design Notebook and label it “Contextual Awareness”.
  • Think about how the kinds of data you identified in the previous slide might be made contextually aware. What kinds of devices would be needed to work with that data? Would most people in Isles communities have access to those kinds of devices? Write another paragraph outlining your thoughts.

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post a comment on this page (1st Day of Class), including a link to your Design Notebook.