Why should you leave your ego & work with your competitors?

https://unsplash.com/photos/3BK_DyRVf90

I organize regular workshop style meetup events focused on Prototyping tools called Berlin Lean Prototyping. One of the biggest problems was a huge dropout in meetup attendees vs total registrations. For example, had nearly 80 registrations for the Invision event, only 20 people attended the meetup event.

On November 28th, 2017 had Prototyping VR UX with Sapientrazorfish event as a part of Berlin Lean Prototyping meetup group. This time approached 2 VR meetup groups in Berlin for collaboration. Virtual Reality Berlin & VR AR Experience Berlin asked them to share this event with their meetup community, had nearly 45 attended in this event.

Guest Talk

Ulf Hyltmark with Hololens

In this event, Ulf Hyltmark, Immersive technologist at Sapientrazorfish, Talked about talked about Basics of VR UX, User experience guidelines to consider while building virtual reality(VR) applications & shared VR UX best practices.

Always prepare for Plan B

Despite a great preparation from Ulf Hyltmark for the demo with VR device he had a trouble with setting up VR device at the meetup venue. Luckily he had prepared video recordings of VR demos in his slides. Shit happens, be ready with plan B.

VR UX Prototype Challenge

Enhance experience of anyone of the following challenge with VR

1. Currywurst store
2. Space experience
3. Car dealership

Ulf giving instruction about the VR UX Prototype excercise

Teams working on VR UX Prototype challenge

Each team of 5 picked a challenge to discuss, prototype on the paper, time-boxed to 30 minutes, to come up with possible solutions.

Pitch session

one person from each team presented their prototype, presented their approach & challenges.

Berlin Lean Prototyping meetup event — Prototype VR UX

Summary of the meetup event

Lessons learned

1. Working with other meetup organizers is a great to way to grow community. Already planning for next VR event with other meetup organizers.
2. VR topic is a trending topic, many people want to know what’s new in this field, get deeper into the topic. So, obviously will focus future meetup event on VR topics.
3. We had great creative prototypes from all the teams. The collaboration of diverse mindset results in a creative outcome.
4. No matter how well you prepare. Always prepare for Plan B. Never know when shit will happen.
5. Paper prototyping is still a powerful prototyping technique.
6. Great support from bitgrip Gmbh crew.

Thanks

Thanks Ulf Hyltmark for the great talk & workshop.
Thanks Liliya & bitgrip crew(Timmo, Lars & Kai) for supporting us. It felt like I came to some other meetup event, didn’t do much work, everything was well prepared by the bitgrip team.