Medarwinisms

What happens when you forget the little pieces

You have the idea, rough thought about implementation. Now how do you go about implementing a concept/idea into an actually working proof of concept. Its easier than it sounds, and often times when starting the implementation of a concept you realize you may have bitten off more than one can chew. Thus begins the goal of defining the base, and features. What to define the base to build on? And what is a feature? With a product like Medarwin, we are toying with the concept of Marketing and software/hardware playing hand in hand. This may sound redundant, but the marketing is the front facing aspect while the software/hardware is the legs/hands that do all the work.

Thus building the legs/hands is what I consider the base, and the rest as features. In the first conversation with Aashish/Aditya (co-founders), I noticed that we were trying to include too much in our first product. They had a great vision for our product, but one, which had to be broken into a base, and features that would make Medarwin a good great product. Thus began my focus to develop the guidelines for a base with only the absolute basic goals of our product: to control what was being displayed on our LCDs from anywhere.

As most developers know: If you start to develop too much code at one time you will get lost in its total complexity and it will not come together. Thus the task of breaking the goal of displaying ads on to any LCD was broken down into specific parts These modules: Blowfish, Lion, and Mustang are the base for our product.

As we defined what each module would contribute towards the final goal, we slowly started to realize we were missing a critical piece to the puzzle: A Web Developer. There is a saying here: “out of all the people you hire in a start up: 1/3 are friends, 1/3 are referrials and 1/3 are new hires.” Our Web developer (Jan) is a past co worker at Netapp, who demonstrated great command with PHP/AJAX/JavaScript in developing online content.

Thus he was critical to the first module to be finished, as it is the interface to control the LCD from the Internet. This is probably the most important part of our product since it is what the user interfaces with. Users will create most of their impressions about our company through this web-based application.  This is where Jan was great;  in a brief amount of time he developed a working application that fills the basic functions of scheduling, grouping, and moving ads around in an organized fashion (this is one of the bases).

Next piece of the puzzle is the LCD control program called Lion. This application has a lot of value as it transforms the LCD into a remote display. It loads as soon as the ebox (low powered PC hardware) is turned on and begins displaying ads that are allocated to that timeslot. Eventually this application might end up having a simple UI for debugging, and changing settings to that LCD but for now that is beyond the basics. Simply downloading ads, and displaying them correctly is what we need to be focused on.

Lastly is our schedule transfer agent Mustang. This is a multi-threaded server application that retrieves Schedules from the database and sends them to Lion. It also handles sending updates to all Lion clients. Most customers will probably never even know about this software since it runs in the backend with no direct interaction. Performance of the module is the focus for this piece since eventually it will be receiving hundreds of thousands requests a day.

Now you have an idea about the process we took to take our concept into implementation with a total breakdown and explanation of what parts there are to Medarwin, A side note: the great part about this system as everyone knows is the ability to work  in parallel, but the con of it is the issue of piecing it back together. There in lies the devil with issues in coding that surface. Hence when painting your next big idea be sure to map out how you can break it down and analyze the pros and cons of your methods.

Robert Development, Product, Technical Development, LCD advertizing, Modules

I came across an individual today that was confused on the topic of dynamic advertising. He asked me “What do you mean by dynamic advertising?”

With a bit of a naïve thought process, I just replied “well it’s advertising that’s not static”, cringe….

After realizing my poor attempt in trying to explain dynamic advertising, I realized that it’s not as simple and straight forward as I had thought.

I could write my own take on this, but to be honest I’d be more interested in what everyone else has to say.

From my experience there are a variety of methods of approaching advertising, from the traditional sense to the modern technological touch.

The same can be said with dynamic advertising. Traditionally speaking, dynamic advertising means that the media being displayed on any specific advertising medium changes with time. This form of advertising could range from rotating billboards to videos on a screen.

In a modern perspective, it means that media being displayed on a specific medium changes with one or more external factors other than time.

Here’s a list of factors that I know are legal:

• Touch
  • This usually involves a touch sensitive screen, using the latest touch screen technology. Multi touch technology is the new phenomena in this category. The touch screen on the IPhone is a good example of what multi-touch technology is about.
• Motion
  • This usually involves incorporating motion detection with your media. There are some of-the-shelf motion detectors that can be customized to your needs or you could get a customized solution from a variety of media based consultants
• Voice
  • This is not very commonly used as it is tough to adapt to a variety of linguistic accents. An example would be having a voice activated ordering system at your table in a restaurant
• Video
  • Now this may not be too legal, but I have seen uses of this in Japan where a clothing store superimposed clothes on to a person and displayed it on screen, just like a mirror that lets you try on clothes without even heading to the changing room

Adding some of these factors to your advertising platform gives your dynamic advertising medium some interactivity with viewers, thus adding an external factor apart from time.

Now, when would you need to use some interactivity? Is it really necessary for that extra buck?
It definitely gets very complex, well I find this more interesting than complex, once you start thinking about Return Of Investment (ROI) with advertising. I will dwell further into this topic in a future post.

Aashish Advertising Technology Advertising, Concepts, Dynamic, Innovation, Modern, Technology

1. Filling up the idea pool

I have always been searching for new product ideas, coming up with innovative designs and prototypes. I actually have a leather cased book, which I call the Indiana Jones diary, where I write down every idea I get.  I usually try writing ideas down with enough detail to prevent a “what the hell was I thinking?” situation when I look back at an idea.

The main thing you need to keep in mind is that an idea is never perfect, so:

• Write as many ideas down as possible
• Write down a rational reasoning behind your thought process
• Move on to the next idea without worrying or getting to caught up with the previous idea

That’s all there is to my perspective of just writing those initial thoughts on paper, it’s more of an art than being technical.

2. Passion is the driving force through the Innovators Wall

After coming up with about 15 or more ideas I usually try and switch off the creative side, which is really hard for me, and start analyzing what you’ve written down. When I look back at ideas I am usually surprised at how feasible some of these ideas become with a second look as opposed to the initial thought of ridiculousness when I was writing them down. “Wow, it’s actually implementable”.

When I look at ideas I usually look for something that I’d be most passionate about, well passionate enough to see the idea go all the way. Passion is the driving force behind every idea, bringing it through the innovators wall (my version of the runners’ wall) of designing, prototyping and R&D.

3. Don’t catch the Ideabola and score some Goals

One of the things I used to always be, and somewhat still am, susceptible to is an infection I call “Ideabola” (or idea ball). This can be best described using a football analogy where you lose possession of the ball when you try to do too much with it. As a consequence, I have started to create sequential goals for my idea, designed to put the ball in the back of the net and avoid getting sidetracked.

4. Finding that perfection (typing this with a cringe)

Let’s just say, it took me a while for me to decide whether I should or should not place the word “perfection” anywhere in this article, but I convinced myself that this is what everyone wants to get to. From experience I noticed that aiming for perfection is like taking a free kick, aiming to kick the ball directly at the goal through a wall. Your chances of scoring would most likely increase by getting help from someone else to score or if you’re that good, swerve it around the wall by not restricting the idea to your opinion of perfection by getting ideas from outside your idea realm.

You need to let people around you help you develop the idea further. Throw your idea out there, passing it around with your family and friends. Get their input to help you score the goals.

5. When should you be satisfied?

The thing about getting that idea development rolling is that you’ll end up with loads of good ideas and everything just needs to be developed ASAP. True, but when will you get it done?
How much more can you spend without getting any revenue?

Well this is where your goals become very important. I have learnt that I always get too carried away with my ideas and just plainly get too lost in perfecting it. To prevent this I matured up and went back to my original goals and asked myself, does my idea hit my original goals in the most basic point of view?

• If it does, get started by creating a prototype and a concept
• If not, go back to the drawing board and get some more idea development flowing

6. Get as much CONSTRUCTIVE feedback as possible!!

Getting feedback is easy, but getting feedback that will be useful is tough. Whenever I get to a stage where I am ready to show my product off, I will list down my personal critique of the product. Making this list helps me judge the boundary from what I do know to what I don’t know, the stuff that is hard to get and is not too obvious to me as the developer.

Whenever I get my product to this stage, I will develop a feedback strategy on top of my implementation plan. I usually ask myself the following;

How can I get information that I don’t already know?
Setting up an online survey is always good to get this information.

How can I place my product into a numerical perspective?
I went as far as finding methods of getting counts and duration of usage. It could also be as easy as seeing a difference in revenue for you client.

What do my users think the product is used for?
I would normally try and get an expected feature list from my clients, to find out what they imagined this product to be and what they will use it for. Here’s where I’ll usually get some interesting use cases.

Aashish Hardware Concepts Advertising, Entrepreneurship, Idea creation, Innovation, Prototyping

I would like to start this blog with some general information about how we started developing our first product offering for Medarwin. Here are the three main steps that we went through to get the initial concept out.

At the moment we are in the process of defining our product and giving customers what they really need.

Aashish Hardware Concepts