IOT challenge by BeBold

During the spring semester, AD&PRLab gave me the opportunity to participate in a challenge related to Internet of things. Internet of things aka IOT connects physical devices, vehicles, and other items with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and networkin order to collect and exchange data. IOT has grown very quicly in the past few years, and is considered as very innovative and promising.

The challenge that my team (BeBold) and I tried to solve, was the incorporation of Advertisement in IOT. Therefore our challenges were two, the creation of a useful IOT product, that advertises other products, related to its services. We decided to focus on beauty and makeup, because it is very trending nowadays and it concerns a huge amount of the population.

More specifically, we decided to make a “Smart Mirror”. Smart Mirror is a device that provides personalised make up product suggestions and make up tutorials. The competitive advantage of Smart Mirror is that, unlike its competitors (youtubers, bloggers, vloggers, makeup artists), it will hels the users apply make up to themselves in the exact spots and in the exact way that every make up product should me applyed. This creation is a revolution of the makeup tutorial industry and it will transform basic-skilled people into professionals.

While examining our audience by research, observation and interviews, we came to the conclusion that people who use makeup want to try new things on their own, but they are not so skilled to do so. They also spend a lot of money on products that are not totally suitable for their complexion. Therefore, Smart Mirror is the answer to their needs.

Having and idea is easy, the hard part is the implementation and the plan that leads to success. My team and I had to make a Value Proposition prototype, where will would make clear who our target group would include(our customers), their wants, their needs, their fears and also the values of our product (it benefits, its feauters and the experience it would provide).

Our steps included:

1. the Value Proposition prototype
2. the interviews
3. the study of the problem and its causes
4. the solution that we can provide
5. the creation of the prototype of our product(how it will look and work)
6. the research of the market- focus on our audience
7. the of where our income will come from
8. the research for our competitors
9. the marketing strategy
10. the distribution chanels
11. the KPI’s
12. the catalogue of our needs (money and team members)

Below is a prototype of what the Smart Mirror will look like

This challengemade me interested in continuing Smart Mirror and making it happen in real life. I believe in this invention and I think that with the right dose of dedication and work, we can make it happen.

In my experience, these months were eye-opening to me. This challenge helped me understand how startups work, showed me the environment of the business world and taught me the steps to make a successful startup. I am trully grateful to my professors and coordinators for pushing me and my team and inspiring each one of us.