HCII Students Envision Next Big Startup Ideas
News
Want to go to an awesome concert tonight but don't want to go alone? Or maybe you aspire to making your own gourmet meal but find cookbooks and online tutorials lack the hands-on training you need.
No need to worry. The HCII's Mobile Service Innovation (MSI) course has you covered.
Led by Professor James Morris and Assistant Professor Steven Dow, MSI teaches the next generation of designers and entrepreneurs the tools and processes they need for innovating mobile services that connect humans through technology. Throughout the semester, students work on interdisciplinary teams to understand unmet user needs, frame a problem, generate design concepts, mock-up and compare alternatives, prototype a mobile service concept, and assess its technical feasibility, financial viability, and desirability. Ultimately, the teams choose a mobile service concept and produce a business model and a video sketch suitable for launching a crowdfunding campaign.
This semester, nine teams created mobile solutions to problems that ranged from not having enough space to pursue creative activities to planning a travel itinerary for an upcoming trip. Locadora connects people who want to create — art, baked goods and other artisanal undertakings — with local space they can use if their own place just isn't sufficient. Another project, Wander, takes the hassle out of travel planning by connecting a traveler with other globetrotters who can share itineraries and suggestions for improving the trip. Other standout projects included Salt and Pepper, which pairs amateur cooks hoping to hone their skills with professional chefs who provide in-home lessons. The Clique project eliminates the conundrum of attending an event alone by connecting the user with other people who want to go, allowing them to chat and get to know each other, and purchase tickets — all within the app.
"This year's teams set the bar incredibly high for new startup concepts in the mobile service market," Dow said. "On the whole, we felt this was the best semester of the class to date!"
To conclude the course, Dow and Morris enlisted a team of entrepreneurs and design professionals to act as venture capitalists who might invest in the students' projects. Each "investor" was armed with faux cash they could distribute to the projects with the most potential. The top three teams — Salt and Pepper (first place), Locadora (second) and Wander (third) — earned bragging rights and a gift card to a local eatery. (Teams are shown at right: Salt and Pepper on the top, Locadora in the middle and Wander at the bottom.)
For more on the MSI final projects — including videos — check out the course homepage.