Hackathon 2018: Monday
And in the shadowless, unclouded glare
Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where
A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.
From today's calm, the lane's enclosing green
Leads inland to a usual Cornish scene-
Slate cottages with sycamore between,
Small fields and tellymasts and wires and poles
With, as the everlasting ocean rolls,
Two chapels built for half a hundred souls.
Cornish Cliffs by John Betjeman
As the third day of our Hackathon began, it was clear we’d really hit our stride.
Matt is based in the Bristol studio this week but he was able to join us for morning stand-up via the power of low-resolution video conferencing. Once caught up on the progress so far, he was then given the task of delivering a ‘finished’ brand for our new service by the end of the day!
It was not just the design team that were sitting atop a cliff face of expectation. The looming deadline demanded that the majority of the client app was complete by end of the day. No small task.
We know that feedback from users is crucial to a product so Laura shortlisted some experienced pilates instructors and called them for a chat about what we’re working on and to ask their opinions. Big relief; the response was superb! We’re on the right track and there does seem to be a gap in the market.
- Instructors are regularly asked for videos of exercises by their clients
- Ease-of-use is crucial for everyone we spoke to
- Instructors wanted to see analytics, especially data around client engagement
- We had a few more feature suggestions that we hope to develop in future versions
The (traditional) Forced Death March was set for tomorrow morning. We can expect mizzly weather and a small degree of grumbling.
It felt like most frantic day so far. Jesus didn’t even have time to prepare the anticipated tortillas for lunch. However, he did have time to say “Lambda Function” at least a dozen times.
Henry made cookies, and once finished said we had to wait to eat them until they’d cooled to their optimum temperature. This didn’t go down well. The cookies however, did.
Jack drove to Plymouth to get a gimbal from the Apple Store. We’re hoping to see some very cool shots once we’ve put together all of the footage at the end of the week.
At 5 o’clock we watched the first demonstrations of the working apps. Seeing our work coming together on the screen was hugely encouraging. It was all becoming very real and tangible.
What do we call it and what does it look like?
This morning we brainstormed some ideas for the name, using the theme of Master and Student. Sensei (japanese for Master) is a great word but very much overused, especially in the well-being movement. Not so common is the Japanese word for student: Gakusei. Shortening this to something snappy but maintaining a Japanese feel: Gaku. Nice, we now have a word that translates as ‘Study’ and ‘Peak’ - thus, the perfect name for the project!
Read our update tomorrow to see how the new brand is applied to the apps in development.
