Prototyping and Testing

Sirisha Bhamidipati

Design

Problem Statement

A sincere , hardworking and smart post-graduate who has studied in reputed Universities, got great ambitions in life and perseveres to achieve his dreams needs a way to try out what he has learnt and learn more by doing, especially by doing with others because he needs to build his confidence to take the plunge into entrepreneurship.

Idea 1 – for Prototyping

Skill based assessments than knowledge based assessments as the norm of evaluation

Focus of education in schools, colleges should be on skill than knowledge. This

primarily requires a change in the mindset . If this is done, students will start to apply

what they learnt and not just learn the rote way. This will also encourage them to

discuss and when this becomes a habit, we will have more entrepreneurs and

innovators in our country

• How would a student react if scenarios are given and the student needs

to respond to them , make decisions and take corrective actions - and the

process and the results are considered as evaluation of the subject?

What and How of the Prototype

What is being tested?

How is it being tested?

Giving a series of scenarios and asking people to respond

Prototyping and Testing • Who?

The same person I interviewed during the school –to-work transition identify and define

phase

Description : A sincere , hardworking and smart post-graduate B-School student who has

studied in reputed Universities, got great ambitions in life and perseveres to achieve his

dreams

• Brief Given:

“Hi. You were mentioning about ‘Learning by doing’ as a significant must in the Indian

Education System. One of the ways to do that, I thought, was to go for a skill based

assessment from a knowledge assessment. By this I mean, if you were tested for not just

reproducing definitions in the exam but are actually tested as to how you apply what you

learnt in a simulated environment and that would be used for evaluation, how would you

like it? To give you an example, I will give you a set of questions on basics of strategy and

marketing and will use your responses to evaluate. Here you go with the questions –

Form your own Company – give it a name, identify the area you are

working in, the Company logo

Define its vision and Mission statement

Do you deal with products or services or both?

If you are a product company, What are the products you deal with? Do

you own production or are you a re seller?

If you are a services company, what is your USP?

Define your positioning and customer demographics

What is your revenue model?

Define your Marketing mix

Prototype – for Basic Marketing and Market strategy

What worked

Questions

What could be improved

Ideas

Observations

• Nice experience

• Definitely better than trying to learn by rote

• It got me thinking

• Will help evaluate impartially – those who

learnt vs those who understood

• Look and feel

• Mode of evaluation

• Can it be made more interesting?

• Can the look and feel of this change?

• What will be my evaluation rubrics?

• Can it be where a decision I made has

consequences which I need to own?

• Can it become a game?

• Can this be a platform where I can keep

trying what I learnt?

Prototype 2– back to the drawing board for revision!

Look and feel

Interesting?? Evaluation?

Rubrics?

Game?

Learning Platform?

Decision => consequences

Management

Skill Based

Experience!!!

Prototyping and Testing

• Who?

The same person with whom Prototype 1 was tested

Description : A sincere , hardworking and smart post-graduate B-School student who has

studied in reputed Universities, got great ambitions in life and perseveres to achieve his

dreams. He now knows the option I am trying

• Brief Given:

“Hi. Based on your feedback, I reworked on the idea and am trying to make it more interesting.

Would you want to give it a try?”

Start Form your company, give name, logo

Identify products, services

• If you land on Red boxes, you get to choose if you want to expand into a new city -investment

• If you land in yellow boxes – you get to change customer demographics – each box has a set of customers adding to your base

• Green boxes help you

introduce a new product – some investment goes into it

• If you land on Dark Blue boxes, you lose market share -

cost

• If you land in pink boxes–

you can do marketing campaigns – cost but more customers =>revenue

• Boxes with you need to pick a card from the nature and man made disaster stack

The grading is based on the Market Capitalization at the end of the duration

What worked

Questions

What could be improved

Ideas

Observations

• Brilliant experience

• Can test all disciplines of management

learnt in B-school

• Excellent simulation of ‘What-if’ scenarios

• The impact parameters

• Strategic decisions

• While learning, can I get cue cards to say

the possible impact of decisions taken?

• Can you take this to a greater depth in each

discipline – one for HR, one for Marketing,

one for Strategy, one for Finance etc?

• Can you build a version that can be used in

the classroom for teaching purpose?

Idea 2 – for Prototyping

Lot of people have great ideas . These ideas don’t see the light of the day because of

multiple reasons – they need some seed capital and they don’t know who to reach

out to, they want to sound off their ideas to others to get their feedback before they

take the plunge, they need others to partner with etc. To facilitate all of these, the

need is a portal where people across the globe can network and collaborate

Encourage people to write down their dreams and share on social platforms

• Will a website – as a platform to share ideas and meet like minded

people help in the collaboration effort?

What and How of the Prototype

What is being tested?

How is it being tested?

Showing a prototype of the website to the end users

Prototyping and Testing • Who?

The same person I interviewed during the school –to-work transition identify and define

phase

Description : A sincere , hardworking and smart post-graduate B-School student who has

studied in reputed Universities, got great ambitions in life and perseveres to achieve his

dreams

• Brief Given:

“Hi. One of the aspects you mentioned in your problem statement is the need to learn by

collaboration. One essential step towards that could be a platform to share

entrepreneurial ideas – with potential investors, others who want to join you and even

those others who can mentor you . If the website looks lie this – “

Prototype – for a social collaboration website

Share an idea

Contact others

VC corner

• In ‘Share an Idea’ participants can share their ideas to others as an elevator pitch

• This will help interested people get in touch with them • Under VC corner, participants can look at which VC is interested

in which line • Participants can send invited to others to join them in the

network. They will be able to interact only after the invite is accepted

What worked

Questions

What could be improved

Ideas

Observations

• Platform to share and collaborate

• Global networking

• Like minded individuals on the platform

together

• Good avenue to pitch to Venture capitalists

• Some collaboration areas rather than just

sharing ideas

• More features

• Who will ensure personal data security?

• Who will safeguard idea copyright?

• How will you track if the platform worked

effectively

• Can actual elevator pitch be made in

person? Just ideas can be shared on the

platform

• Can it become primary collaboration

platform – with idea sharing being one of

the features