RAMYA K. CHINTA

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

For our final poster presentation and pitch, I wrote and edited this quick video sketch to demonstrate how easy it would be to install and use Anzen. While we originally wanted to film everything, our team decided to go with pictures because it would have been difficult to film a car crash occurring. 

Special thanks to the people at Pep Boys who let us film/take pictures with them and to the cycler who didn’t call the police on us when he thought our staged car crash was real when he rode by. :]

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

2 Cool Things

1) ANZEN won first place in our class-wide venture competition. :D For our final poster presentation/pitch, our professors invited ten reviewers (Pittsburgh venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and business people), and gave them $10,000 (play money) each to distribute to their favorite products/presentation. We got first-place with $24,000. (AHHHHH) 

As the semester-long product manager, I couldn’t be prouder of my team. :D

2) I graduated. YAYYY. Below my friend and I are hamming it up for the camera with Charlie’s Angels. :D

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

the one where I prototyped a website, part 1: low-fidelity

I currently work in our campus University Center as a Building Supervisor. Aside from making sure events are running smoothly around the building, helping older customers order ubers, and helping lost five-year-olds find their grandfathers, I also help design brochures and pamphlets that we give out to visitors. Last summer, when we were thinking about how to make training new Information Desk student employees more informative, I was asked to create a prototype of a training website. We planned to post training videos, contact information and bios of our bosses and our student employees, frequently asked questions that we are often asked, and helpful links on the website.

Here are some initial sketches:

This would have been the welcome screen. (The three youtube videos would have been the most important training videos.) On top, you can see that we only planned to have five pages on the website: Welcome, Meet the Staff, How Do You…?, Important Links, and an FAQ

This page (How Do You…?) would have been where we placed important administrative information such as how to deal with lost and found items, who we need to contact for what problem, etc.

On the Meet the Staff page, we would have posted staff pictures and bios. It’s easier for the employees and the scheduler to ask for subs when you know who you’re asking.

 The FAQ page would have been answers to a list of random questions that we frequently get such as “why don’t you have a first aid kit at the information desk???”  (Answer: Because legally we’re not allowed to!) 

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

As I dramatically announced to my professors and classmates before my group started our presentation yesterday, Lanebrain is now ANZEN. In japanese, anzen or anzen-sei means safety. We decided that it sounds professional, technical, mysterious, and interesting (like Hulu). (Also it was a better choice than No Crash!...) 

Final logo to come soon!

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

Our lab used the first poster before I joined the study last summer. I designed the second poster after we realized that we had to be more clear about who we wanted, the purpose of our study, and the change in our compensation after a few false starts. I also made the second poster easier on the eyes with new color scheme and new fonts (thank you bebas). We put up the second poster around campus and around Shadyside, a surrounding neighborhood.

“Ramya, you even paid homage to the original poster with the talking heads clipart!” - the graduate student researcher I was assisting in the lab 

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

How did I combine my homesickness and my eternal love of the TV show, Parks and Recreation? Answer: By designing and writing a semi-satirical government proposal for my class, Interaction Design Fundamentals. 

I’m planning to put this project up on my portfolio by the end of this week after I make some final edits and revisions. (I should definitely make sure that my pie charts don’t look like they were created in excel....) Stay tuned to see my favorite and always reliable font combination, gil sans & minion pro, in action! 

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

When I was taking Interaction Design Fundamentals last semester, my professors mentioned that designers should try and make the extra step to make logging in simply more fun. I attempted to do just that in our first prototype designs for Know It by taking advantage of the checkmark in our logo.

If you log in correctly, our app checks in a checkmark into the box to let you know that you did so! You can see on the first screen that if you don’t have an account yet, you’re unable to see the checkmark until you get one. By doing this, we’re hoping to 1) make our checkmark (and by extension our service) feel a little exclusive, and 2) quickly and subtly get our users pumped that they’re going to learn a ton with our service (and that they will get to check off many more checkboxes in the future). :]  

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

Some possible names for LaneBrain are:

CarHelper

CarBeSafe

Anzen (japanese word for safety?)

EyeSpot

SpotIt

EyeSee

iSee 

No Crash! (~inspired~ by No Thai!)

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

I’m not a dinosaur living 65 million years ago so I made a linkedin! 

CHECK IT OUT: linkedin.com/in/ramyakchinta

I will continue to update it periodically tomorrow. :] 

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

rip lanebrain

LaneBrain (Lanebrain? lanebrain?), our product we’re developing in a class I’m currently taking (Mobile Service Innovation), is going through a major overhaul because it will now also include blindspot and collision detection instead of just lane detection.   

(To recap, we wanted to develop Lanebrain so that anyone, not just people who own a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW, can have access to important safety features. We’re hoping to do this by finding a way to connect blindspot/lane detection hardware to your smartphone.)

To conduct research on the feasibility of our product and whether or not actual companies would want to install lane detection software on their cars, my teammates and I interviewed Pittsburgh UHaul and Zipcar representatives. We got a lot of new useful information such as: 

1) if cars do come back with damages, the damages are usually on the front and rear bumpers

2) Zipcar drivers have trouble with running into poles and curbs

3) UHaul drivers have trouble with depth perception and knowing what’s going on around them because it’s usually the driver’s first time driving a truck so they don’t know how adjust the side mirrors properly 

When we asked Zipcar and UHaul about possibly “buying” our product, the Zipcar representative told us that she couldn’t put a number on the price they were willing to buy our product for but she will look into having Zipcar pilot our app for us if it turns into something real (!!!). The UHaul representative told us they could probably spend around $500 per vehicle.  

Based on this information, my team decided to divert our focus to blindspot detection. We’re not taking lane detection out of our list of features completely (because there’s already popular and cheap blindspot detection devices on the market) but the product’s main feature will blindspot detection because many people struggle with blindspot detection. We would be able to cater to regular drivers, not just car rental companies, etc. (After surveying fellow Carnegie Mellon students about their driving skills and using lane detection software, we found out that they don’t want to spend a lot of money on lane detection software because most of them were confident enough with their driving skills. However, when we asked about problems they had while driving, many also mentioned blindspot detection.) 

Because we changed our focus to blindspot detection, this also means we have to change our name from Lanebrain to [???]. 

SO now we just have to conduct more research on the tech behind our device, find a new name for our product, interview professors in the Robotics Institute, build a prototype, write a growth strategy, write our final business plan, and create a Kickstarter pitch. :’D 

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

In this quick video prototype, I explain how a tutor on Know It can create a class they want to teach quickly. The high-fidelity, hi-def clickthrough on InVision can be found here. 

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

#tbt to when I tried to pull a Beyonce for the Know It logo :] 

We wanted our app/web platform, Know It, to be a place where students can connect with other students on campus to learn skills of interest. After a student meets their tutor, takes their classes, and learns what they need to know, they can cross learning that skill off their to-do list. 

In the end we went with a checkmark because it felt more positive and that it got the point of our app across more clearly. (I also really, really wanted to animate a checkmark for the elevator pitch we made.)

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

Did you know that you can type "typewriter" with only the top row on a qwerty keyboard???

my housemate who is neutral towards flowers 

While talking to her about qwerty keyboards for a class project, she also told me that swiping to open the lock screen on iPhones is only convenient for right-handed people because you swipe right. I’ve never thought about that (as a right-handed person) but I’m also a little surprised that there’s no way to reverse the swiping on your phone in case the user’s a left-handed person.

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

In this animation everyone drives around in red Nissan Cubes to be hip. 

[rkcwritesherprocess-blog]

I can make gifs now! :D

fun fact: Moving the mouse around the canvas reveals my housemate! In a description I wrote about the project for class, I wrote that I chose to program flowers because flowers “represent” her, but after I showed it to her she said “.............err but I don’t like them.” WHOOPS.