Big thanks to everyone who came – hopefully everyone got something out of it and most importantly we hit our goal – well sort of… more on that in a bit anyway.
For those of you who didn’t make it, the lack of female presence may have pushed the session down a bit of a boys toys route but we will try and redress the balance next time.
I thought I would write up the output from the session just so everyone gets the overview.
Ok, so we started with everyone’s favourite app and what the pros and cons of them were… in no particular order:
Pros:
Being impressive to others
Occupying time on journeys
Getting location based information immediately (meeting friends, arranging taxis etc.)
Getting real-time information (travel, news, sports etc.)
Listening to any music, anywhere (radio or friends iTunes)
Viewing visual based content (slick interfaces etc.)
Saving time
Having friend influenced information
Being able to know what a music track is instantly (Shazam)
Make you laugh for 30 seconds
Embedding additional content into things (QR, AR codes etc.)
Cons:
Some of the usability and design is poor
Having to use a low quality camera
No video
Location or internet based services don’t work underground (or without signal)
Battery life
No Flash
We then kicked on with our fifty ideas brainstorm which was reduced down to a short list based on levels of difficulty, removing any we thought didn’t make the grade (such as countdown clock, bankers v politicians, happy scale, voodoo doll, blood loss! and of course ‘good places to take a leak when you’re caught short’ )
Level 1: The basic ideas
Top Trumps (cheers paul)
Snap
Spin the bottle - swine flu detector
Old Phone Dial (Bakelite)
Beat the breathalyser (walk the line test)
Level 2: The slightly less basic ideas
Snake charmer game
Outfit picker (shake it in the morning and it gives you an outfit to wear from your wardrobe)
Keepy-upy game (bat and ball on a string)
Love Child (take a picture of you and your mate and see what your offspring would look like)
Pushy game (Curling, Sjoelen, Shove ha’penny etc.)
Level 3: The slightly more complex ideas
IT (tag, lurgy etc.)
Holiday exchange rate checker with friend locator - how hot (temperature!) are your mates.
TomCat (Geo-tagging areas, iGraffiti etc.)
Home James (a one button get me home service)
Level 4: The complex ideas
Find your drinking partner/mates at festivals etc.
League builder (for amateur sports)
London Walks (or any kind of walk that you can down load with points of interest)
Panini Stickers (collecting a series of items of something)
The complex ideas were temporarily discounted for the purpose of this exercise.
We then whittled down the remainder to the 4 finalists on which everyone had to vote in order…
and the results were in reverse order…
4th Place: Home James
3rd Place: Love Child
2nd Place: TomCat
1st Place: Pushing Game (Curling, Sjoelen, Shove ha’penny etc.)
So Pushing Game was the winner – however one last sting in the tail is that the games (in some versions) do appear to have already been built!
We need to do something new, dynamic and challenging, so a quick re-group of the team over here has decided that we are going for the next on the list TomCat.
The plan is to regroup next Thursday and re-address exactly what Codename: TomCat is and does… Look forward to seeing you then…
