Week 1: Client Kickoff

Client Kickoff

We had our client kick-off on the 23rd of January, 2018. The meeting was arranged at CMU with 2 representatives from our client side.

The Goal | To put names to faces and officially introduce ourselves to the client. To understand the history, working style, communication method and general idea about the project.

The Method | The meeting agenda contained a 15 minute ice-breaker design activity, a detailed explanation of the HCI iterative design process, an hour long Q & A session and an ending section containing next steps and setting up logistics.

Nishchala and Marina facilitating the design activity while Brooke is busy taking notes.

The Design Activity | We asked the client to describe their company as a person and add notes to describe their characteristics, behavior, interests, etc. Our team demonstrated the exercise first by creating a personification of the MHCI program. We pre-selected a few positive and less positive traits (motivated! but also stressed) to encourage them to be honest in their assessment of the company.

Brooke, Jon, Aishwarya (team Eaton) and our faculty advisor Jeremy Smith helping shape our design activity while prepping for our client kickoff.

Our MHCI persona, drawn in real time on whiteboard, while a team of 10 shouted out characteristics for the same.

What went well| The design activity was a success! We could see the clients sharing jokes and laughing while adding notes to their persona.

The Q & A session helped us understand a lot of important key points about the client, some of the major ones being:

1. They see this as a immediate solution, something that would be deployed in the next 2-3 years. So, our solution has to stay grounded to current and near future technology.
2. They are taking active steps towards the area of disaster management. They had a client conference a few months back in which they had a session dedicated to discussing what can be done to improve disaster preparedness.
3. The client was really engrossed when we explained the iterative design process using a service design project that was done by 2 of our teammates in the Fall semester.
4. The client wants us to actively engage with their in-house team!

What could’ve been better| The distribution of sections could have been better. While we are still understanding each other’s personal style, a few of us needed to speak up more than the rest. Something that we all want to change.

3/5 members of the team felt the kick off went really well, 1 felt that it was ok and 1 felt it was somewhere in between ok and good.

Lessons Learned

The Gut Instinct

While the general time for a client kickoff for any Capstone Project is recommended to be around 3 hours, the entire team felt that it was a too long since the beginning. We learnt that it’s better to follow what everyone thinks or at least keep a backup plan around it.

Con | The actual meeting ended in 2 hours instead of 3 and we had to make alternate arrangements for lunch on the fly.

Pro | We did it quite gracefully. In spite of the running around for last minute table reservations at other places, we managed to find one pretty soon and not look frazzled in front of the client.

Next steps

In the coming weeks, we plan to workout a detailed research plan, understand each other better, understand the client and the brief better, eat well and have a good time! :)