IoT challenge: PROVE MIRRONG / The Outsiders
One more semester of our AdandPRlab concluded, this time we face different and more intriguing challenges and of course gained new experiences. One of this challenges that stole our attention was the challenge about the Internet of Things, a very innovative and challenging project which I knew very little. So my team and I thought of taking a chance of learning something new and work on it. The internet of things is the inter-networking of physical devises, vehicles, buildings and other items embedded with electronics, software, actuators and networking connectivity which enable these objects to collect and exchange data. The internet of things is growing at an exponential rate and we have been asked to find a startup idea that seeks provide ad-tech solutions in this emerging field. We had a lot of research to do in order to see some of the things that have been done already and get to know better our challenge, the variety of iot items is very large, and we face a problem of finding something new, interesting and most important helpful.
After a lot of brainstorming meetings with my team and a lot of discussion with our instructors we came up with the idea of the PROVE MIRRONG gadget. First things first, the main problem we understood that exist, is the need of every person to save time so as to manage to do more things during he’s day. But we also thought of the need that people have for fun, relaxing and getting a mood boost. In this situation usually some music helps. Combining all these, we thought of a gadget that is like a mirror but it uses facial recognition and scans your face to understand your mood and play the kind of music you like or need. So as to make you feel better and start your day with this mood boost, easily without losing time to open your laptop, your cd player, or trying to find or remember the songs you like.
In order to see if the gadget we thought about is efficient, helpful and there are people that are interested in it we fixed a questionnaire and did some interviews to an amount of almost 40 people, with hopes of finding out what they think about our idea for the iot challenge. We were very pleased to hear that people find it interesting, time saving, helpful and in a way funny. These insights showed us that we were on the right path and we should move on with our project.
Our business model is basic our target group doesn’t have an age limit, we basically address to every person that love music and music is an important thing in their lives. We will need investors for our project in order to provide money for structure and cover crew costs ,for building the first prototypes. W e will sell it through retail, in gadget stores and of course through e-shop. The advertising part is going to happen through google ads, TV spots, social media and promotional campaigns. As far as we are talking about a gadget customers are been engaged since the purchase of it. And we gain money through the sails of our product.
The visualization of our product as I already said is a mirror that connects with the internet and through your personal accounts in Spotify and youtube and any other sites that you use so as to hear music, will download that data in order to make it easier and faster for you to hear the music you want, the time you want it and combined with the mood you have. One more thing is that the first time you buy your mirror and fix the settings you will also include the style of music you here and the artist you love, this way our gadget will also be able to advise you some new staff concerning your tastes.
This whole process, this past three months of working in this iot project made us learn a lot of important things about creating a startup, cooperating with each other, the opportunities that exist in the market and also made us better in lots of ways. For starters, we learned what we need to know and what we have to create and present, when we are talking to investors also taught us the belief we need to have in our selves and in our ideas when we are trying to create something new and innovative. The business market is tough but when you work hard, carefully and know what you are doing then you are going to succeed.
I don’t know what our next steps are, but I am certain that we have a lot more to learn and a lot more work to do but that is good because more interesting challenges and new things are on the way and I can’t wait to engage with them in the future.
Thank you very much Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou, Katerina Vlassopoulouand Ms. Spiros Kapetanakis for the opportunities you present us each time.
Team Members: Όλγα Κουτρουμανου , Peggy Makrigiannaki , Panayotis Reppas .
