Winning the Next36 Startup Sprint

From Friends to Teammates, We Design Together

Before I jump into talking about the memorable weekend at the Next 36 Design Sprint in Toronto back in September, let me begin by sharing how Dandi and I met.

Last September, we began our Master’s program in User Experience Design under the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. With shared interests in user experience and art, we quickly bonded. First we became friends, and then, we became teammates. Through frictions and collaborations, we learned to be dedicated, reliable and supportive teammates for each other. Both being imaginative, innovative, and quick on our feet with actions, we took on many opportunities together in the short time we’ve known each other.

Just a few weeks before the Next 36 Design Sprint in Toronto, I was invited to a social gathering at Dandi’s condo in downtown Toronto. Along with the invitation, Dandi sent me a personal note warning me about the complicated and unwelcoming guest registration process at her condo. Sure enough, what a nightmare! When I arrived on the day, a lady quickly slammed the door on me fearing that I would follow her in. Then, it took me a long time to buzz in using the resident directory. When I finally entered the building, the concierge asked for my photo ID to record my legal name. Good thing Dandi warned me, right? Imagine how I would feel otherwise? What if the only photo ID I had is my health card or my passport? And from this experience, Dandi and I found our problem to design for:

Can we improve condominium’s security system while maintaining guests’ privacy and pleasant experiences?

After identifying this problem at the Next 36 Design Sprint, we quickly started building upon it.

As of December 2017, statistics show that over half a million people live in high-rise complexes in Toronto. With increasing needs of tighter security protocol, the situation with complicated guest registration process will exacerbate. Current market-available solutions for guest registration pose serious privacy and security concerns such as personal data breach and sneak-ins. In addition, interpersonal conflicts between patrons, visitors, and building management can negatively impact the management group’s reputation.

Applying our knowledge and expertise in UX research, we conducted series of interviews with fellow attendees the Next 36 Design Sprint to validate our problem and idea. Worrisome condo security and terrible sign-in experiences are common problems for condo residents and visitors.

“It’s a weird experience. Frustrating. People judge you for waiting and it feels like you don’t belong…” - Anonymous attendee at Next 36 Design Sprint

“It’s a very realistic problem. I experience it all the time and glad to see you solving real problems.”- A mentor during the coaching session at Next 36 Design Sprint

After validating our idea and market, we moved into visualize our design solution with rapid prototyping. This was no easy job for a small team of two. The beginning was smooth. We did our sketches to show how and solution would interact in real life. The 10,000 ft overview looked amazing! But, we soon got stuck on one step in the workflow and it was important. For the remaining time on the first night of the Design Sprint we weren’t able to come up with a viable, acceptable alternative for the one step. Our night ended in a bit of frustration. (Okay, it was actually quite a lot of frustrations.)

Storyboarding

Collection of brainstorming and research

Second day, we decided that we were going to make a come back! Luckily, we had extra helpers work on the problems with us. The Next Canada team invited industry mentors to coach everybody on Design, Product, and Pitching. With the generous help of the mentors, our second day was smooth-sailing. Not only did we solve the workflow challenge we encountered, we also learned about really useful pitching techniques we didn’t know before. By the end of the design session, we felt confident in our product, its design, and how we were able to deliver the sales pitch in 90 seconds!

Practicing for the pitch

“Let me tell you a story….” With the story we shared at the start of this blog, our pitch began.

Buzzin is a smart city solution that increase privacy and security and decrease conflict at Condos. It integrates software & hardware, allowing guests to use a single entry code received through electronic invitations to access the condo front entrance and elevators. 

We could see all the curious eyes zooming in on us, hear the noise of the projector being magnified in the quietness and feel our guts twisting inside of our adrenaline-flushed body. WE DID IT! Team Buzzin won first place! We delivered the design idea successfully and received lots of positive feedback from the knowledgeable judges. We were proud of what we accomplished in the short two days.

The Next 36 Design Sprint organized by NextCanada and Protohack was an excellent opportunity for young aspiring UX designers like us to build, hack, design, and prototype solutions. Using the best prototyping tools in the industry, we started with pencil and paper and later translated our design to a high-fidelity prototype using Figma. Although we already came into the Design Sprint with some design and prototyping experiences, the mentorship and pitching experiences were felt so fresh and exciting. In addition to thanking NextCanada and Protohack, we would like to extend our gratitude to product mentor Yana Antov, design mentor Lisanne Binhammerand pitch mentor Erin Smith for their help to take our idea, design and final pitch to the next level!

To this date, we truly appreciate the opportunity to network with many talented and like-minded peers from various backgrounds at the Next 36 Design Sprint and we look forward to continuing this project with prize we won and the learning communities we were introduced to. Young brilliant designers out there, we would love to meet you at the NextCanada National Selection Weekend. See you soon!