This past weekend I had the opportunity to participate in a first-of-it’s-kind event here at RIT called RIT48. The goal was simple enough to understand – create a web start up company, and have a prototype, by the end of 48 hours. Executing this, however, was much more complicated.
Thanks to Twitter, I was able to find a team amongst current friends and friends of friends. Some of these teammates I had worked with before, and others I have known for years. Our team of 5 was incredibly diverse: there was me, a New Media Designer, as well as David Brenner (Computer Engineering), Richard Thomas (Software Engineering), Craig Martek (Computer Science), and Scott Victor (Business).
Prior to RIT48, we did meet twice. Both meetings went smoothly and we settled on the idea of a roommate matching system that served a dual purpose – match you with a roommate AND find a place to live. Our prototype was going to be focused around RIT however, we recognized the scalability of our idea both in terms of a housing/roommate finder but also the expandability into other areas such as music and movies. We even settled on a name – AmplRoom.
As Friday morning (Mar 19) approached, we were all very excited to embark on this experience. None of us were entirely sure what to expect. We had until Saturday at 4:30 to design, develop, and flush out product.
My part of the project was to design our logo as well as our website. By 5pm on Friday, we had a logo as well as a presence on every social network possible.
AmplRoom Logo
By 8, I was ready to move onto the site design and this was after an abbreviated functionality flow charting process that was little more than me scrawling on notebook paper. Because of the time crunch, we weren’t able to do an in depth flowchart process or site layout and forget about wire frames.
This part was, by far, the hardest for me to grapple with as a designer. I am very methodical and thorough, especially when it comes to process work. I feel like process work and laying out exactly what you are going to do is the most critical step in any project. Despite the seemingly haphazardness of our method, we were extraordinarily organized and even though I did not have a chance to do all the process work that I love so much, we were able to supplement by being able to verbalize exactly what we were going to do. The collaboration and synergy between our team made for smooth sailing.
By 2am, we had a front page design.
Front Page Design
Around 3am, I decided that I really needed some sleep, and I came back at 10am ready to crunch out more designs. Our developers had been working hard through the night. My goal for Saturday was to create as many page states as I could, because we were unsure how much our live demo would encompass.
As our developers were working hard, and I was designing, Scott worked our our business plan. When it came time to turn our business plan in at 4:30pm, we had 8 pages, including my designs. Our team took advantage of our fabulous judges and met with them frequently to review our business plan and get feedback.
Final presentations came and went, and the judges were impressed by what our team had accomplished in 48 hours (especially our business plan and our designs) so much so that they awarded us first place. Even though our live demo lacked a lot of the functionality we wanted, my mock ups helped supplement and demonstrate our concept.
Did I mention that we made t-shirts for the presentation? I’ve done several group projects this year, and I’ve made t-shirts for all of them. The judges complimented us on it, not because we looked amazing in our 3 dollar t-shirts with iron on transfers, but because it demonstrated that we were a cohesive team who could collaborate and truly work together to become successful. Little things, they said, like t-shirts, may not be of the utmost importance, but it is very telling.
Our team was unique because our diversity. Other teams fell short on their business plans and their designs, while excelling in functionality and concept. We were one of the larger teams, but we were the most balanced and we shined.
The best part about this experience is that it’s not over yet. We plan to continue to work on this project and see if we can execute what our business plan entails. At the end of April, RIT is holding a business plan competition which we also plan to enter.
Even now, a day or two later, I still can’t believe that we accomplished so much, so quickly. I am very lucky to have my team and we have so much potential to move forward with this product (not just a project, a product – that’s so cool!).
You guys did a great job. What made your team really shine was a clear concise layout, a thorough business plan with financials and a clear monetization strategy, and the CORE FUNCTIONALITY of the website was DEMONSTRATED THOROUGHLY. You personally did a fantastic job with the overall branding and design. The thing that I hope all the teams learned from your success is that an entrepreneurial product is made by not just a programmer/designer, and not just a business person – but a thorough and equal contribution from both sides of the team.
As you also pointed out – you guys solicited feedback, and asked for help. Too often developers creating a product believe that only they can solve it – getting help from the outside room, doing research and tapping into professionals outside your field of expertise are key parts of building a great entrepreneurial product. No one person, and no one team can possibly have all the answers – you need to be humble enough to step outside when you need additional information or assistance and ask for it.
Hope you all had fun, learned some stuff along the way and made some friends for future endeavors – that’s what college is all about after all
Sounds like an interesting experience! I also love the logo, would like to hear more about the business. I run a roommate matching software company through Facebook and always looking to get to know others in the field. Let me know if I can be of help if you decide to move forward with the project.