We're in! The epic 10 day house move!

Oh how I wish I could have spent more time on my projects this last fortnight, but here is how life broke down for me.

Tuesday 15th April we get notification that our house was to be rented and that the time limit for our movement was 27th of April.

Less than a week and a half to finish renovations to make the new house to lock up and water tight condition so that we can move in.

Wednesday 16th April we hire the Truck. Packing and moving on a hill which has a 1:2 climb up stairs to the house was hard enough but moving the entire house contents at a moment's notice was just an incredible feat.
As we expected, after spending the last 2 years helping renovating and moving family around twice, they are all suddenly too busy to help us move ourselves.

Life being what it is, it's the old saying in my house now validated... "It's Mark and Flick vs the world". No problem, head down and bum up lets do this... packing and moving the house contents has taken 7 days on it's own. With Arcade Machines, personal items, furnature, filling 2 skip bins and completing renovations at not only the destination but the house we were leaving also.

We lost a whole day to a long lost family reunion which saw our family seeing people thought lost for 22 years... so that was nice..

The brother in law set fire to the Truck on day 4 helping to move the arcades and getting the remote for the truck lift in the tray and bursting the control box on fire..... 3 hours later I had managed to reverse engineer the fused wiring without a single cable colour which wasn't black or charred. A complete re-wire of the hydraulic control system I now know a hell of a lot about Truck hydraulic systems. So I suppose everytime you learn something new, it can't be that bad!

Anyway, renovations at the old house, it's never been so clean. Moving into the new house with no phone, no kitchen, a bathroom which flooded on the first night, no door actually locks, full time work... Stress levels are at maximum!

The first moment I've had to sit down and do a single piece of university work is 7pm on Sunday night and I feel like the last 10 days was a blur.

I am behind... I'm corrosponding with my team and happy that by the end of the week at university before the break we were ahead... but I hoped to devote much more time to uni than I ended up with.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who reads this.... University is SOoooooo much easier when you don't have full time work, a wife, 3 mortgages! and 2 houses that need repair and rental. With the loss of our child last months... the pace of life at this moment hasn't even given us the time for this to even sink in... it's either a blessing or a curse at this time... and regardless of your point of view... the lesson I've learned is to not stop.... just keep going...

I wish I could give up work and devote more time to this course/unit... but life responsibilities come first... I have a wife and a family which come first.

I knew this year was going to be a big bite of the pie... so bare with me as I'm working 20 hours a day and have been since the beginning of January. It's catching up on me and taking it's toll, but the results will be worth it...

The second half of this year should be easy compared to the work and effort I've put into this first half....

Anyway... that's just a brief background of my life for the last fortnight.... this week I will get internet connected to the house and try to get back to normal as much as I can... if only we had a kitchen...

Mark.

Mobile app idea # 3

Mobile App Idea # 3

Name: "Foodie" or "Foodle"

Target Users: Singles, university students, urban socialites

 

Information:

Problem:  This problem came to me whilst eating out at a cafe, upon sitting down and a menu placed immediately infront of me. I noticed the cafe next door looked much more appealing in terms of atmosphere and much more popular with patrons. Having an inquisitive mind, I asked myself why? Took to google looking for answers before making my order in search of reviews of the cafe I had sat down in. Searching and finding convenient reviews for establishments was difficult, most apps seemed limited in searching and/or reviewing. Anyway... long story short... we should have went next door.... but that got me thinking about why it was so difficult to find this information? An APP IDEA!!!

 

The Gap:

 

The problem I face was not finding the cafe, or even the reviews through Google. It was the quality of the reviews and any active participation by the business to do anything with the reviews. I immediately identified what I called the user experience loop breakdown. I could not get reliable reviews, and the business could do nothing with trolling bad reviews which were obviously incorrect presumably by competing cafe owners?

Solution: My app idea wasn't new by any standard. Mobile search and review applications are plentiful. But my idea for the user experience gap was.

 

For an application to be useful (and hence used), it has to provide either entertainment or useful gain to the user. In this case, I wanted to know why the cafe next door was more popular? What were the reviews? Could the reviewing system be trusted? Google reviews are fine except when making decisions based on annonymous feedback. 

 

It is open to abuse and corruption if not moderated. Most businesses do not have the time or knowledge that these reviews are happening, thus they can not respond to any complaint or service requests.

 

So how do I get people to take the time to give honest reviews and be accountable for them? By giving them more of what they want in return for repeat business? An app that would allow users to link reviews to facebook/twitter/instagram accounts and give a 'face' to the reviews being made.

How does the user benefit from this?

 

Consider a loyalty card scheme which rewards customers for repeat business, then mix it with the review scheme from ebay where you can easily assess the authenticity of a persons comments\feedback by the number of purchases or sales they have made? = Now you have a system where the user will receive discounts for honest reviews when eating out. The reward program

How does the business benefit from this?  

 

When a review is made, the cafe or restaurant website can be entered for businesses not already in a Google database, the 'contact us' information is extracted and used to send a personalized email with a 'join this app' link to become part of the community and respond to the complaint or positive review.

The business can now offer additional reward loyalty credits for a customer to return and try the cafe/restaurant again and update the review if previously unsatisfied? The incentive program

 

How does the developer benefit from this?

The developer may through the use of push notifications, suggested advertising or direct paid advertising increase revenue through and with business. Almost like the Yellow Pages concept, a business wishing to post to the news page or direct access to users email to push advertising at a cost.

 The money maker program

 

 

 

Mobile app idea # 2

Mobile App Idea # 2

Name: "Make my dinner" or "My kitchen Sucks"

Target Users: Singles, university students, people who can't cook

Information:

Problem: Got a pantry full of ingredients, but no idea what to make?

 

Solution: This app is designed to be a solution or part solution to determining what you can make with the items in the pantry.

The idea would be that the user opens the pantry and with a 'Coles' checkout style tiled item list, could select from a few or all of the items visually spotted on the pantry shelves. By clicking the [Make My Dinner!] button, a search is sent off to acquire as many recipies based on the full list or part list of ingredients available.

This app would benefit the culinary inexperienced and can expand their food knowledge base with this tool. Potentially saving money when buying unnecessary food items when there was sufficient means to create a low cost meal on the shelf but the user did not know a recipe for them.

If the user just simply does not have enough stock to make any meal, perhaps it could recommend a random recipe based on past searches and provide a list of ingredients to get or suggest a local restaurant/cafe?

The Gap: As it turns out, as I'm getting older, I'm meeting more and more young adults fresh out of home on their own with zero cooking experience. This application will bridge the gap between users first out of home and unable to cook for themselves and giving them the confidence to try a hand at cooking, thus becoming a competent adult to cooking for themselves.

Design challenge 2 - This time it's mobile! .... The Idea Train

Design Challenge 2 - This time it's mobile

Mobile App Idea # 1

Name: "Dude, Where's my Car?"

Target Users: 18-50 yro

Information:

Problem: A smartphone user has their car stolen.  

Solution: This app is designed to be a social media announcement and tracking application.

The idea is that the user may use the app to enter details of the car which is stolen along with a photograph which they may have on the phone also. Using linked accounts to twitter and facebook, this stolen car report is packaged up to as many social networks as possible with a forward/share link to allow the fastest spread of the notification. 

As part of the notification, a [Reply] button would be available for anyone wishing to comment on this report. A person whom may not even be known to the original owner could pass comment that they have spotted the vehicle and a geo-tagged location would be returned to the owner via push notification.

Alerts may be restricted to users in social networks who are in a particular range (kms) of the stolen car event and passed automatically to police authorities looking after this area.

The application will be waiting in for a response by anyone who replies, or tags the vehicle with the app camera function. The Registration number will be flagged and the owner of the vehicle immediately notified.

All 'Found' notifications are only received by the owner of the vehicle and the person to lodged the report. Police can monitor and participate through interaction with the reports on the application.

Possible expansions of the concept: 

"Dude, where's my' Cat?"

"Dude, where's my' Dog?"

"Dude, where's my' Boat?"

"Dude, where's my' Wife?"

First!

Design Challenge 2

So, here it is... Design challenge 2 - The Mobile App.

This post will be the beginning of my design journal for this challenge where we have been tasked with designing an innovative new mobile application. 

All of my thoughts, decisions and design data will be uploaded here as I do them, so stay tuned and I hope you enjoy our Project 2.

Mark