Month: October 2015

Cost Structure & Functional Prototypes

Announcements

Design Notebooks

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

Links

Cost Structure

Let’s review the project canvas.

  1. Problem & Existing Alternatives
  2. Customer Segments & Early Adopters (Target Audience)
  3. Unique Value Proposition & High Level Concept
  4. Solution
  5. Channels
  6. Revenue Streams – what’s in it for you?
  7. Cost Structure
  8. Key Metrics of Success
  9. Unfair Advantage

What is cost structure?

Let’ go around the room and talk about what expenses we may have for our projects,

  • Expenses can be one time, like buying a computer or peripheral, or they can be repeating or ongoing, like renting equipment, rendering time, or a paid account on Github for private development repositories.
  • Be sure to think about promotional expenses like printing for posters or business cards that may not be directly related to your project, but are important for showing it.

Exercise

Take 1/2 hr or so to think about your project and what expenses you’ll need to cover.

  • What software, hardware, equipment or services do you need to develop your project? List everything and include price estimates
  • What kinds of software, hardware, equipment or services do you need to present your project at the Spring Show? List everything and include price estimates
  • Create a master list in two sections, development expenses and show expenses.
  • Add your expense list to your project canvas

Assignment

Project Canvas

  • Update the Cost Structure block of your project canvas with the expenses list you worked up in class.
  • Review your canvas and reflect on the direction of your project.
  • Does your project directly address your stated problem?
  • Does it target the needs of your early adopters?
  • Have you quantified what you’ll get in return for successfully completing (and showing) your project?

Functional Prototypes

  • If you haven’t already begun translating your paper prototype into a functional prototype, begin doing so now
  • Focus on the most difficult (or uncertain) aspect of the project first
  • You want to eliminate the unknowns as quickly as possible so you can identify what resources you’ll need in order to successfully complete your project next semester

Revenue Streams

Announcements

  • Dust or Magic in 2 weeks on Nov 3rd
  • Midterm status reports due this week – please make sure you’re up-to-date on your Design Notebooks and Project Canvases
  • Let’s talk about next semester
  • Next week –  budgets & expenses

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review some of your Design Notebooks.

Links

Revenue Streams

Let’s take a look at the project canvas template.

  1. Problem & Existing Alternatives
  2. Customer Segments & Early Adopters (Target Audience)
  3. Unique Value Proposition & High Level Concept
  4. Solution
  5. Channels
  6. Revenue Streams – what’s in it for you?
  7. Cost Structure
  8. Key Metrics of Success
  9. Unfair Advantage

What’s a revenue stream?

For our purposes, let’s think of this as any kind of remuneration for your efforts. This could be a job, an investor, a customer, happy parents, a good grade, etc.

Exercise

Take a few minutes to think about what you would like to get in return for all your efforts this semester and next developing your senior thesis.

  • Make a list of everything you’d like to get in return for your project
  • Order the list in terms of what’s most important to least important
  • Try to assign a numeric value to each reward; i.e. if you hope to get a job out of it, how much should that job pay? Investors? How much investment are you looking for? Customers? How much should they pay you for your service?
  • How can you find out what the going rates are for jobs in your field (hint: Glassdoor)? Looking for customers? How much do your existing alternatives charge for their services? Investors? How much money have your existing alternatives raised?

Assignment

Reading

Please read Junior UX Designer Pains: The First Job

Design Notebook

  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebooks and title it “Dream Job”
  • Write a brief paragraph describing your dream job – what would you be doing? Where would it be? Would you be working at a big company? A small company? Your own company?
  • Create an account on Glassdoor.com
  • Do a few searches on Glassdoor for job titles you’d like to have
  • What’s the average salary for that job title in the location you’d like to work?
  • Check out Money.com’s cost of living calculator
  • Input the average salary figure you found on Glassdoor.com into the calculator along with your current city and the location of your dream job
  • What’s the cost of living in that location?

Project Canvas

  • Update your project Canvas with your list of things you hope to earn as a result of your Senior Thesis project

Channels & Prototypes

Announcements

  • Midterm break next week – no class
  • Make sure your Design Notebooks and Project Canvases are up to date
  • Next meeting 10/20/2015 where we’ll discuss ROI and continue refining our prototypes

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review some of your Design Notebooks.

Links

Channels

Let’s take another look at the Project Canvas.

What other channels are out there we should be aware of?

Exercise

  • Take a few minutes to list all of your current professional organization/community profiles.
  • Are there any memberships or accounts you should have but don’t? Make a list of memberships or accounts you need to create to effectively target your early adopter audience(s).

Prototypes

Let’ take a few minutes to tweak your paper prototypes:

  • Think about one example user
  • Think about one task that user should be able to accomplish using your project
  • On a separate document or sheet of paper, list out the steps necessary for that
  • Create a paper model demonstrating that list of steps

Exercise

Now that you’ve prototyped your users task, let’s beak up into groups of 4 or so and try out each other’s prototypes. Make notes on any questions or alternative uses that show up.

Assignment

Channels

LinkedIn

  • If you don’t already have a LinkedIn account, register one.
  • Log in a create and/or brush up your LinkedIn profile.
  • Include your Education, including your focus and special interests.
  • Include all your internships and/or employment history, emphasizing your experience RELATED to your focus and special interests
  • If possible, link in to your internship and/or employer supervisors and request endorsements for each position

Focus-specific Community

  • If you don’t already have one, create an account on one or more professional communities related to your area of interest
  • Polish up your account, making sure your profile is complete, including an avatar image other than the default – try to make this consistent across all your professional accounts
  • If the service supports portfolios (Behance, Github, etc), select your best work, polish it up, and share it publicly – only share your best work – quality over quantity – even if it’s just one or two pieces at this point. Keep everything else private until you can bring it up to your best standards.

Project Canvas

Update the Channels block in your canvas, listing all the professional communities in which you intend to share your Thesis Project in order to target your best employment and/or customer prospects.

Design Notebook

  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Channels”
  • Write a brief paragraph describing the kind of people you would most like to see your Thesis Project (are they your Early Adopters?)
  • List the professional organizations/communities you have created accounts for, along with links to your profiles

Prototypes

  • Continue iterating on your paper prototypes, try creating digital versions of your paper prototypes to begin transitioning from your paper to your functional prototypes