Notes

Reflection 3:

Over the course of designing a product for the recent presentation, I learned some interesting things that I would like to apply to future HTE projects. The insights described below are as follows Needs Filtering, Personal Motivation, Teamwork, Business Plan, Presentation, and Future Considerations.

1. Needs Filtering: Think More
Our group had some amazing ideas. Some of the runners up included: a "smart-toothbrush" that monitors oral health, a patient-based EMR system, and the health-monitor idea (see email thread w/Dr. Agus). Ultimately several teammembers compromized to decide on Guardian Gear (the hip-protector) because of feasibility and the obvious market. Many of our other ideas could probabaly have been simplified or adapted to suit our skills/requirments and interests if we had taken more time to analyze our needs. I've heard from several people now that coming up with the right need to work on is the most important part of the innovation process.

2. Motivation
Over the process of brainstorming, I've realized that the projects that really drive me are all directly related to things that affect very close friends or family. While several of the ideas we brainstormed were highly significant in a statistical sense, many were insignificant to me personally, and I felt very low motivation to think about them.

3. Teamwork
I think we interacted well as a team. In particular, I really valued Kunling's contributions to our project. I've noticed he tends to a bit quiet in group settings, so I made a particular effort to get his opinion throughout the discussion. Several times, the three of us would quickly get stuck in some discussion without even noticing it, then I'd ask Kunling what he thought, and he'd have the solution. His insights were great. One of my biggest personal learning experiences this semester (from HTE and from Keck) is that loud/outgoing people don't necessarily have the best ideas and that making the effort to get the quieter people invovled can really improve the discussion.

3. Business Plan
Over the last 2-3 years, lots of people have been talked to me about the importance of IP, IP, IP... however, over this semester it has become really clear to me that somebody's success is not going to founded purely on IP, but on a combo on IP and a solid business/marketing strategy. This became crystal clear during the competitor-research section of our project. So many people have built airbag-belts/bacpacks for seniors that have failed because they had a bad marketing strategy (sold to the wrong audience or terrible branding).

It was as if the companies were founded and run by scientists/engineers who built solid technologies but didn't recognizing the value of good business planning. Application to HTE: 1st build a solid device. Then, spend a lot of time working on a business plan, do lots of initial testing on a specific sub-section of the market, spend a lot of time on Design. Steve Montgomery from Cepheid comes to mind. His entire job (or at least a major portion of it) was to shape the perception of the Cepheid machines. I think that is an incredibly important aspect of launching a product or pitching it to investors.

4. Importance of a Well Designed Presentation
My goal for the presentation was to apply design princples to create an engaging, motivating talk. I've watched several fantastic business pitches and wanted to incorporate elements from them into ours, mainly: story, simplicity, clarity, and flow. Of the elements, st


3. Quality pres needs Simple slides

Takeaways
Team Strengths - engineers
Weaknesses: time, motivation (got to figure it out for all ppl in HTE), skills
How to invovle more people? (key, build a prototype, raise money, then find additional help, but who and how long?)