This week we initiated action plan: Sprint Two Takeover. We’ve been busy with sprint planning, missing Gijs (who is currently in Japan, read: we’re hoping for some sushi souvenirs), nursing Atossa back to health (she’s alive and kicking now), workshopping with Charlie and getting invaluable tips and tricks from Felipe (and getting started with our mountainous pile of work, natuurlijk).
Gijs helping us with sprint planning. Phew.
One of the things we struggled with as a group during the last sprint was spending a lot, a lot of time ideating which ultimately took away time from actually doing. Oops. So Gijs lent a hand and helped us break down our crazy, slightly gibberish brainstorms into smaller, more manageable tasks for the SCRUM board. It was magical.
Visual translation.
On Wednesday we had an ideation workshop with Charlie. We did different brainstorming techniques to better understand our project, look at it from different perspectives and come up with many, many new ideas. It was stimulating and refreshing and discussions got ever so slightly heated. Nikhil had a weird obsession with space that day and Shreya got excited about constellation mapping. We’re getting galactic. Also we’ve named our screen: Keits. Nikhil wants to use Keits to subliminally message and control peoples’ minds, or something. Um…
Post-meeting. Shreya is a crouching tiger or something.
We also met with Felipe to discuss personas, something else we needed a bit of help to tackle. We need to start thinking of our users as the same for both the VolksHotel and OBA; the key difference is in how they make use of a space when they are in it. So. Much. Sense. Made. We also started seeing correlations that we hadn’t really paid attention to before, such as the literary connection between the two companies, as well as how they both incorporate stories – metaphorically or literally – into their spaces.
Physical putting staps? Check. Mirrors? Check…
The rest of the week was filled with developing personas (Atossa is all over it), researching engagement and conversation and coming up with models, illustrating parts of the Amsterdam skyline (stay tuned), coding and more model-y things. Oh and deciphering odd things we’ve written down on sticky notes in a minute of eureka. Pictured above.
Nice hands, bro.
Oh and one more thing: Last Saturday night most of the team went to Canvas at the VolksHotel to check out the club night atmosphere. We were guest-listed and everything, and Orly started all conversations with: So, do you come to the VolksHotel often? Not even a pick-up line. Just serious research. Go team.