Commercial + Communication + Emotional
We started off with an idea to create a bracelet for people who NYU Shanghai students who are looking to meet new friends while waiting for classes. Sometimes, it takes a few hours of wait for the next class, and some students complain about the difficulty of making new connections, so making it easier for students to find people who were available at a given time and willing to network seemed like a good idea. However, during our first group meeting, we realized that creating a product for NYU Shanghai would not necessarily qualify as “commercial” and would have many flaws such as the challenge of actually finding people in the academic building. Therefore, we decided to brainstorm more. I personally played the role of the devil’s advocate, trying to question every idea and poke holes in what might have seemed like a good product idea. Eventually, Robin mentioned concert LED bracelets, Gabriel mentioned networking, and we agreed on taking our initial NYU Shanghai idea onto another level: creating a bracelet called “Connect” which would make it easier for people who attend networking events to strike up a conversation. We decided that such a bracelet should be able to change colors whenever an event organizer decides to engage the event participants into a new activity. As people bond over similarities, seeing that somebody has a bracelet of the same color (temporarily) would act as a trigger to approach and chat.
For the prototype, we decided on an LED bracelet. Nevertheless, if such a product were to be introduced into the market in the future, we would prefer it to contain an LED strip which would make it more visible. As the purpose of networking events is to engage with others, we decided to give the control over the bracelets s to the event organizer who would control the colors by an app shown below:
Such an app would make it easier to randomize colors or assign particular colors to participants who indicated, for example, their field of work.
Overall, I think that I learned a lot from the process and enjoyed working on such a talented team. I also really appreciate the feedback we were given in class. I think that the idea of creating a Connect subscription model could turn out great if we were to deploy such a product.
Link to the PPT: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1A8Lxm_Ls0dZgKOBhPvO6HGjgRqOqWW-usGLTZasisRU/edit?usp=sharing