Each of you should have access to the pencast from today's meeting here:

Lunch Brainstorm / Meeting - 9 March 2011

Sorry, you will have to create an account to see it.  It's either that or I make the pencast public, which I'd prefer not to do.  Make sure you sign up for an account first, using the email addresses I gave you access to, if you'd rather I use another address then let me know.  I haven't checked the audio levels, the computer that I have my software on has no sound... but hypothetically you should be able to play back the entire session with audio.  I tried to replicate the sketching best I could while it was happening on the whiteboard.  Let me know if you have issues!

We all managed to gather to have a creative brainstorming session on Sunday afternoon. To enable the sharing of ideas Heidi, Alex and Jessica skyped me (Eewei) in and we tried a few 'Gamestorming' ideation techniques to help get our ideas out there under semi-structured creative thinking environment.

We started by talking about some general ideas about what we thought the project could be and put some post-its on the wall. We quickly decided that perhaps having school children as a persona type would be an interesting starting point. Throwing in the idea that they could learn about different cultures through this 'tool' we would devlop made for an interesting brainstorming session!

We created an Empathy map to understand what it might be that these children would see, hear, say, do and feel when interacting with such a tool. Next step is to validate this with real children. Eewei to take this as an action as his wife works with school children!

We then tried to validate the tool using a part of the Business Model Canvas technique which ties customers/end users back to key value proposition via relatiosnhips that need to be formed and understanding what channels are best suited to deliver the experience:

• Customers: Children aged 6-10 years old, Parents, teachers
• Value prop: Make friends, safe learning environment, learn about new cultures, valueable addition to the teaching curriculum
• Relationships: Friend, teacher, trusted peer, trusted system, teaching assistant
• Channels: e-table, web site, mobile, email (penpal)

We had a brief stab at creating the Elevator pitch too:

"For children between the ages of 5 and 10, Culture Buddy (tbd) is an educational tool that helps children learn about different cultures (through the 5 senses) in a safe environment by connecting and conversing with other children around the world"

Home work and next steps are to do individual research on how technologies has helped convey a sense of culture through using the 5 senses!