Aug 31-Sep6
The fall semester 2015 began and our new project team met each other at 2404 ETC. The whole team was excited about the new project and everyone was energized because of the summer. Initially the team was unclear on the project idea since we were unsure of the requirements from our client “Opportunity Education Foundation”. We met with our team advisers that day and had a formal introduction to each other and their interests. The advisers gave a brief idea on what the clients were expecting from the ETC project team. After the meeting we were supposed to finalize our role and various responsibilities for the project.
Our first task as a team was to decide on the name for the team. Without spending a lot of time we came up with AKILI which means bright and smart in the swahili language. Having an african word would give a personal touch and always keep us motivated for the fact that we are working for betterment of the youth all around the world. Once the team name was decided our artist Ruchi started sketching out few typography to be used for the logo. Amy also joined to sketchup few mock logos. Ladera started taking care of the initial logistics for setup and the team’s extra requirements for tech. Adarsh and Kanglei had a brief discussion on choosing the asset manager.
We scheduled our first client meeting on 9/3/15 and started preparing questions and possible doubts that we might encounter in the meeting. We got few resources and client documents before hand. We had an hour long meet with Joalene and Manuel about the previous work on the OEF and their requirements for us. We had a detailed conversation and almost all our questions and doubts were cleared. After the client meet we had a short discussion within our team about the project and how the project should be headed. We also split responsibilities according to the project. A Raci chart and the core hour timings were decided and put up.
The next day we had a brainstorming session and we came with various ideas and how to tackle the project requirements and whether there was another way to accomplish the goal from the client’s suggested version. We summarized what we discussed and formulated a rough trivia game design which the client needs. It was a productive session and also gave the whole team a rough picture what our end product will look like. We also started playing few trivia games to get the feel from an audience and user standpoint. By the end of the week we also managed to go for a team hangout which seemed to be the pathway for new friendship among the team members.
To summarize, in the first week we did not spend lot of time on trivial things like deciding names, roles and not coming up with something new idea for the problem. We made sure that the first week goals were completed and had a good start. For the following week we will send our client our rough draft of our idea to make sure whether we both are on the same page. We will be discussing that with our advisers and get their inputs to catalyst our brainstorming session. We also booked an appointment with Jesse Schell to get more ideas and thoughts. And so the things are set in motion.