Question 1: Issues faced by the team and individual members.
When our team of 5 came together at the beginning of the semester, our group was a mix of students who had worked together previously on other assignments and new group members. Having students who had worked together before was beneficial as we were already aware of particular people's strengths and weaknesses. This allowed us to develop an understanding of what the group dynamics would be like and how we would all work together. The new members to the group fitted in well and we established almost immediately that all members wanted to succeed and do well in the project. Having a common goal made it easier to organise a plan and develop a work schedule for the semester.
The first issue faced by the group was developing an 'Internet of Things' idea. This was a challenge as we found it difficult to create an original idea that enhanced a manual function using technology while also incorporating social media. Some of our initial ideas included using your mobile phone to turn on the lights in particular rooms, an automatically controlled air conditioning system that adjusted the room temperature relative to the weather report found on your mobile phone, and a virtual pet app that through the use of a sensor allows you to monitor you're pets activity when you are away from home. While these ideas would be useful for particular users, they failed to effectively incorporate social media into their use and seemed too difficult for us to create. In order to overcome this issue we needed to investigate further and create more ideas.
After further research and brainstorming we developed an idea that we decided to develop throughout the semester. The idea we created was an application that enabled you to use your mobile phone to open your garage door without the use of a remote. Our research indicated however that similar products were already available on the market that enabled a garage door to be opened using a mobile phone. The majority of these offerings required users to enter a security code into the phone in order to activate the door. In order to overcome this issue and differentiate our product from current offerings our idea was designed to use the phone's location services to open the garage when the selected driver was within 50 metres from the property. We believed the public would positively receive this IoT idea as it eliminated the need for a garage door key and used sophisticated technology to simplify an everyday activity.
We began researching our idea and exploring how to develop the offering immediately. We were presented with the issue of how to incorporate social media in order to enhance the app. Discussions with Suresh were very useful and he helped advise us on ways to overcome the roadblock we were presented with. He suggested we use the IFFT app and incorporate Facebook or emails into the garage door application to introduce the social media aspect of the project. We decided to use email, so that when the door was opened, using the mobile phone, a predetermined selection of close family or friends would be emailed to notify them that the user was home safely. By providing a social aspect to the application we not only increased the offerings safety and security (as family would be notified of the users safe arrival) but it also made it a more sophisticated and useful offering that meet the assignment requirements.
As individuals within the team we faced different issues when developing and researching our offerings. We all identified ourselves as not particularly tech savvy students. This was an issue, as we initially believed we were required to code the application in order to make it operational. Each individual had no previous coding experience and we did not know how to go about coding such an application. While each individual was competent when using social media, our inability to find sites that provided coding tutorials for novices was worrying as we were presented a dead end to our project development. The realisation that coding was not required was relieving and allowed us to investigate current market offerings that could be used to develop the product.
In the final stages of development for the mobile phone controlled garage remote we identified a way to make the app work. In order to activate the mobile controlled door activation and email notification simultaneously a particular piece of software needed to be purchased. This device contained two parts that remained inside the garage and linked all components in the offering enabling the functions to occur when the door was activated. While this breakthrough was exciting and provided a feeling of accomplishment for all group members the expense of the device was a limitation. While the device would not be considered expensive if it were to be used in a real life situation every day, it was too expensive to purchase for the sole purpose of this assignment. While the expense prevented us from being able to provide a example of the IoT offering in use, we have developed all other steps of the project so that it is able to be implemented and used immediately by other users.
Question 2: Photographs and any other supporting artifacts capturing the assembly of the final project and computer code written or ethically hacked.
MyDoorOpener app is currently available, this app enables you to open and close your garage through the smartphone app.
IFTTT app enables you to link to apps together so when you do something on one app it does what you tell it to through another app, automatically.
We will be using the two apps combined, so that when you open your garage it automatically sends an email to your selected individuals in your closed group to inform them of the activity.
The following link goes through the instructions on how to use and setup MyDoorOpener as well as the IP address and how the app was formulated: http://mydooropener.com/downloads/MyDoorOpener-Instructions-2.pdf
Once both my door opener and IFTTT are downloaded they can be linked to automatically send an email, IFTTT provides the recipes for this to occur.
Question 3: Marketing Implications of your Internet of Things (IoT) Project
“When a customer purchases a home garage, the installer, suggests to them downloading an iPhone app in order to open their garage whilst simultaneously notifying their family that they have returned home.” This is one way of communicating our IoT project to the target market in order to increase its use. Using the iPhone app MyDoorOpener in combination with the app IFTTT and your Mail app, the target market could let the Internet work for them. Whenever they open their garage it will notify those close to them that they are home. The target market, more specifically would be anybody who has a desire to use their technology as a means of communication whilst opening their compatible garage. All three of the necessary apps are available on the iTunes app store, IFTTT creates the ability or ‘recipe’ for the preferred email app, to send an email to anybody whom the consumer wants notified when they have opened their garage door.
The cost of setting up the devices in order for the social networking aspect to be activated is free, however there is an initial cost for the MyDoorOpener app and the technology needed to make the homeowners garage compatible. The app and garage components are available to anybody purchasing a garage, however there is a need for installation, whether this is done by the homeowner, or a professional, they must ensure that the instillation is done correctly in order for all these apps to work together. The apps, however are quite easily viewed on the app store and can be downloaded form anywhere where an internet connection is available.
One suggestion to the creators of the MyDoorOpener app is to promote their product along with the other apps when a customer purchases a garage. This may cause longer instillation periods, but also gives them more opportunity for long term profitability. The target market will then be more aware of the product offering and by simply giving them the knowledge that they can incorporate a notification to all family members that they have arrived home, will be extremely beneficial to both parties.
An email, with a link to the essential IFTTT recipe could be sent to all those customers.
This would create a safety feature into the use of the garage and could enable a family to track when the garage door is open, or when other family members have returned home. By notifying those around you are able to communicate without needing to use your phone whilst driving. It also gives the target market an opportunity to rely on their applications to work together, and more importantly work for them.
Question 4: Highlights of the project and lessons learnt.
Highlights of the project:
Researching allowed us to stumble across many interesting things. Firstly getting our head around the concept of ‘internet of things’ meant we watched a myriad of YouTube videos. Some of the inventions with technology on there were mind boggling and incredibly clever. This definitely shaped the way we then thought about our project and then influenced the way we came up with our idea.
Realising that the technology/app was already out there and functioning, that we needed to make our idea work in reality. All we needed to do was install the technology at the garage door and program it to the application for it to work.
Working together as a team to turn our idea into fruition and learn from each others different skill sets.
There are a myriad of apps out there that already do a lot of things we thought of, this made brainstorming and coming up with an original idea rather challenging.
That a simple idea can actually provide great convenience for consumers. There isn’t a need to make your app complicated, it is appealing to a consumer if it benefits/improves their life in one way shape or form.
There is technology out there already that can be utilized for new purposes; sometimes all you need is just an idea, an idea that fuses two already existing things together to work to create something new and unique.
That writing HTML coding is rather complicated especially if you haven’t been educated in this area, however you can create an internet of things app that would benefit consumers without having to be a computer genius and write HTML coding etc. You can utilize the technologies already out there; bring them together to fulfill another purpose.
The simpler the idea, often the more effective and easily implemented and developed it may be.
The cost of setting up the devices in order for the social networking aspect to be activated is free, however there is an initial cost for the MyDoorOpener app and the technology needed to make the homeowners garage compatible. The app and garage components are available to anybody purchasing a garage, however there is a need for installation, whether this is done by the homeowner, or a professional, they must ensure that the instillation is done correctly in order for all these apps to work together. We learnt that new technology can be expensive, and whilst our idea is practical and could benefit consumers, in terms of marketing and sales, we had concerns about whether or not a consumers would pay for the new product and the installation. We would have to factor in the costs when setting the price that we would have to charge to make it profitable. Would this then adequately represent the value of which this product gives to consumers?
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