New Blog and Site!
Team Cynergy has moved this blog to our website!
All existing posts have been moved, and new posts will be made at:
https://greenamsterdam.nl/blog/
Check it out!
Updates!
Is there such thing as “too well”?
So, last week was our first sprint review, and it’s a little worrisome that it went too well. The presentation went great, partners were impressed, we were happy with the outcome, but then, that’s not always a good thing and here’s why:
- Are we going to be able to keep up with the standard we set? (which btw, is too hard to maintain every sprint)
- The partners now want to be more involved in the project
That is mostly the highlight of the past couple of weeks. Oh, and the fact that the studio pipes froze (lol) and we weren’t allowed to stay there for perhaps 4 days. It was really difficult to focus on work outside of the office, everything is a distraction.
We had a team retrospective, where we all sit together and discuss how it went during the last sprint, some of the positive insights were:
- Supportive team
- Comfortable & honest communication
- Motivated
As for the negative insights, they were mostly workflow related:
- Lack of focus sometimes
- Too much humor
- Lack of time planning
This week we’re back at sprint 2! Excited, scared, and most of all, no idea what to expect next or where this is taking us!
A full week to work
This week marks the first time that we are able to work on the energy project 5 days of the week. Monday and Tuesday we continued research. This research was concluded on Wednesday
On this same day we also showed our result to our coach Felipe and Michiel, another student working on a similar project.
After all the desk research it was time for some field research. Thursday morning Barbara and I went to an Energy Breakfast. This is a breakfast/meeting organised by 02025. They organise this event every 2 weeks and discuss different topics on clean energy. This is our gateway to get contact with people and even recruit them for our project.
On friday Barbara and I were sick. Besides on working on their personal goals, Nour and Jake went to an Amsterdam Smart City event to meet more of these 1%. They also went to Bloom, an event about AR which was with the whole medialab as a small fun event.
Time to get down: the first sprint!
Research research research!
This week we finally get to know more about our topic, and because it was still a bit vague – or at least that’s how we felt – we needed to conduct a lot of research. It’s a bit different than what we’ve been doing, because we’re sitting at our desks more often than we did the past two weeks. But that makes sense, right? We started the week by spending some time with our coach discussing our team contracts and personal goals. It’s funny and kind of cool that all our goals are skills a team member already possess, so if we ever get stuck well, we have each other.
Some highlights of the week…
Weekly Lunch
Team Here & There cooked this week’s lunch, and it was wonderful. Joao gave the recipe of a Portuguese dish, light and tasty.
// Barbara & Christine waiting for lunch and the aftermath when everything was finished.
Javelin Workshop by Evelien
Evelin gave us a Javelin board workshop. The Javelin board is a startup planning tool that helps define the user problem and aids in narrowing down assumptions. It was a bit confusing because we knew so little about our topics.
// Thinking about how we should define our hypothesis
Design Method Toolkit
This week we met with Wouter Meys. He is the coördinator of the Citizen Data Lab, our project partner. We had a very interesting talk about the energy transition in the Netherlands (Amsterdam in particular) and how they want to empower the 1% to lead this change from using natural gas to green energy. We prepared a stakeholders map to take to this meeting and discuss where all the stakeholders have a place. 
// Selected cards from the Design Method Toolkit we think are interesting for our research
More next time…
Nour & Barbara
Falling in love with the problem
Now we have designed and presented our team identity, it is time to start making something! This week is all about getting familiar with SCREAM. This is a design method developed by MediaLab itself and contains the best of agile sprints, SCRUM combined with fostered creativity. Also, if we would like we can also scream it out, but that aside. SCREAM basically leans on three stadia: research translating to creation and the other. SCREAM works with different sprints, wherein you will work towards a goal … ?
To try out this design method, we were asked to work on a problem from start to finish. Instead of falling in love with a product, we first need to fall in love with the problem! I will write a short summary of our week of tinkering in the form of a mini design sprint.
Tuesday
“the PROBLEM is finding the right PROBLEM”
“How can we empower children with disabilities so that they can have clear and customized representation in the toys they play with, in a sustainable manner?”
We fortunately didn’t have much trouble finding the right problem, as it was already given to us. But before falling in love with the solution, we first needed to fall in love with the problem…
// Nour and Martijn working with a laser cutter to make the board
After EXTENSIVE brainstorming (and having difficulty controlling our feelings for the solution…), we designed an activity to uncover which sense participants feel they could live the most without. The activity involved a board with 5 different simple activities that require each of the 5 senses. Participants first complete the activities without any hindrance, and then they are completed once again with an impairing tool to simulate a specific disability.
Wednesday
always create an audience
In what way does your prototype call for discussion? –> Test your prototype and spark the discussion. Gather data!
// Finalized board for the data gathering experiment
We went out on the grounds of the HvA to conduct our experiment. Participants were asked to complete the following activities:
- Touch – various objects are first felt in the hand uncovered, and then with a glove to simulate partial loss of touch.
- Taste – participants first eat a piece of stroopwafel and Gouda cheese, then a piece of tofu to simulate loss of taste.
- Smell – participants first smell a small jar of ground coffee and a scented candle, and then repeat the process with the nose plugged to simulate loss of small.
- Sight – participants view picturesque images of scenery, and then view the same images again with glasses designed to simulate tunnel vision and loss of vision.
- Hearing – participants wear headphones to listen to clips of a song. The song first starts normally, then gets progressively distorted to simulate losing one’s hearing.
// Jake, Barbara, and Martijn conducting the experiment with a participant
Participants were finally asked to rank from least likely to most likely the senses they preferred to lose. Out of 12 total participants, the results were displayed on a string graph, and showed that the sense desired least to be lost was sight. Thus, we decided to design a game which highlights blindness.
Thursday
After much debate on what out game would be like, we decided on a board game. Called a Day in a Life, players simulate an average day of a blind person while needing to overcome obstacles they may face. Players roll dice to travel around a board, landing on certain actions that help or hurt them. Players may pick up a “Bonus (Guide) Dog” or “Bonus Braille” to overcome an obstacle. Obstacles that may be faced during the game include taking the wrong train because the station announcements weren’t working (and thus having to move backwards), being unable to cross the street because the acoustic traffic signal isn’t working (and thus losing a turn), and needing to wait for another player to pass you to read the menu at a restaurant for you (you starve to death and lose the game if you’re in last place at the time).
// Nour and Felipe work on the laser printer
We spent the first half of the day designing the board, and the second half in the Maker’s Lab creating the board and other game pieces.
Friday
After finishing up the final touches of our game, it was time to showcase it at the expo!
This is what the final setup looks like…
We gave an overview of the project, answered questions, and then it was time to play!
// Anneke trying out our game board
// Nour, Jake, Barbara and Martijn: Team Cynergy presenting their test products
Overall it was quite an exciting week getting to know the machines and teammates. We are looking forward to creating more and dive into other problem sets!
Jake & Barbara
Cynergy with a C
Welcome to our blog!
Last week we started with a new adventure: an internship at MediaLab. After a couple of days getting to know each other and emerging ourselves in scavenger hunting, cooking challenges and listening to each others Pecha Kucha presentations… It’s time to get started!
The first task was to create an identity for our team. We talked, discussed, dreamt and came up with a lot of ideas. Looking through this sea of ideas we decided to go with Cynergy:
- C for clean, ‘cooperative’, combination, creation, creativity, culture and more
- our team exists of various international people with different backgrounds and disciplinary skills. Together we are a synergy
- synergy but then with a ‘C’: Cynergy
// Team flag
After deciding our team name we started thinking about our team motto. Again we stumbled in a world full of (sometimes cliché) ideas. To stay in style of Cynergy, we thought of the idea to move two worlds together: the digital and physical versus thought and action. With this, we want to make people
realize that they as individuals matter and can change the world.
We strive to be:
- progressive
- creative
- dynamic
- user oriented
- experimental
Last but not least, we worked on creating our group photo while incorporating the grid provided of MediaLab. We experimented with different styles, colours and text and came up with the following examples:
// Team photo. From left to right: Jake, Nour, Barbara and Martijn
// Team motto combined with a group photo
Next up: the makers sprint!
Until next time,
/Barbara