How we build out ideas

Thanks to everyone who has been involved in the design process so far. Now that we are moving into the final few weeks of the project, making ideas more practical is critical to their success once they become concepts, and ultimately prototypes that we can test with people. Moving from idea to prototype can often be challenging, because we want to create results fast and aim for the grand vision in mind, while also needing to respect other peoples opinions and visions.

This past sprint we had the pleasure to stop by the Drop In Centre to speak with students about the latest concept being formed, surrounding the idea of a internship support platform that connects students. This is the initial concept and feedback we received:

The internship peer support platform is an opportunity to connect students in way that helps build their capacity to find, apply for, and navigate successful internships. Of the people we spoke to, their initial thoughts on this concept were positive:

• All participants liked the concept and thought the execution was a positive first step in creating a live peer network.

• Most participants said they would use this concept both in asking questions to the community and being helpful to others.

• Most participants felt anonymity would help in being a knowledge provider using this concept.

• A few questions were raised about the security and trust of each individual using such a network. How do we validate student recommendations?

• Incentivisation was raised however no concrete incentive was said to be required to use a peer network other than good merit.

• Creating a secure network could be costly, and small steps towards maintaining the peer network from the UTS Careers team is advised

• UTS monitoring of the network could be time costly, and will have to be considered

• What’s the smallest test we can make to provide this value?

• Flexibility of the concept is still important as it takes shape and is build out further

• The main benefit participants saw was the ability to upsell good internship experiences to other students.

• Another strong benefit participants sensed was this idea feels credible coming from their peers.

So where do we go from here?

Now that we have done initial testing, it's time to start creating quick solutions that can make this concept come to life fast. To do this, we create the simplest form of use first, rather that starting to build a concept that requires lots of time to create the first working draft.

An example we like to use is that of building a moving vehicle.

We may want to start building a car right away, but it will take time and be costly upfront. When we start from the simplest form of that concept, we see that a skateboard can move us from point A to point B in a similar fashion, but at a fraction of the cost and time to build.