Capstone Project Kick-off
At the start of our 8-month journey, we spent the first two weeks meeting our team, faculty advisors, and clients while digesting the project brief and conducting initial research.
Meeting the team
Before jumping into the project, we spent some time getting to know each other, particularly our background, expectation, working preferences, and communication style. It was exciting to know about each of our team members’ interests and previous experiences in design, architecture, and interactive media arts. We started by creating a Team Charter to lay ground rules, set expectations, and define logistics for effective collaboration.
Initial Research
Although the brief included a project overview and goals, we still have tons of questions about the mentioned technology and the project’s direction. Reading the project brief line by line, we wrote down all of the rising questions and grouped them into higher-level questions. This activity defined our specific areas needed to conduct deeper research, and likewise existing areas that we were already familiar with.
Kick-off meeting with InterDigital
At the end of the second week, the CMU capstone team and representatives from InterDigital met to kick off our 8-month journey. Prior to the meeting, our team planned the kick-off meeting structure and received feedback from our faculty advisors, Anna Abovyan and Rachel Dzombak.
The final format for our kick-off meeting focused on facilitating open dialogue between the client and the CMU capstone team to avoid any instances of over-dominating the conversation. We began our meeting itinerary through introductions, fun facts, and sharing our worst nightmares and idealistic dreams in regards to life. This interactive session allowed us to build rapport with our clients and humanize the overall project process, by engaging with the minds behind our expectations. While augmenting our own knowledge repository through the client’s expertise, we decided to do an activity called “The 5Cs,” to brainstorm various aspects of UX in the defined domain and technology. It opened up our imagination and consequently, we were able to write down some crazy, exciting initiatives to explore.
What we learned
The first two weeks involved multiple back-and-forth communication among the team, faculty advisors, and InterDigital. One of the key takeaways was maintaining transparency and consistent communication on sharing information and concerns as early as possible in our given timeline. Working interpersonally, we realized that it is crucial to check in with everyone’s availabilities and responsibilities for the given week so that we stay on track to achieve our progress goals and objectives. Additionally, it was also a great reminder to periodically share our progress to receive feedback, even in the form of simple drafts or early-stage sketches. Ultimately, we were all reminded to embrace the iterative nature of product development since the beginning of our project.
Next Steps
Our kick-off week was a valuable time to get to know each other personally, understand our client’s missions, and brainstorm creative, innovative ideas we had in mind. We are still dealing with a ton of ambiguity regarding the problem space, design opportunities, and even domain, but we are ready to navigate them through design research in the following weeks.
