Friday 18 December 2015
Thursday 10 December 2015
Friday 27 November 2015
Lean Canvas Business Model
Below is shown our Lean Canvas Model, where we evaluated our possible market advantages, possible revenue streams as well as target customers and cost structures.
Wednesday 18 November 2015
Week 45
On week 45 we had some pair programming sessions, with 2 to 3 members programming in the same place at the same time. This proved to be a much efficient way of programming than just coding by oneself, as we could discuss the problems and figure out solutions together and not just in our own minds. The only problem with pair programming is finding times that suit others, as most of us are quite busy during the week as well as during some weekends.
On Friday the 6th of November there was the second lecture on Lean Start-Up. The main topic covered on the lecture was the Lean Canvas business model, which includes figuring out our problem, the solution, our key metrics, cost structures, Unique Value Propositions (UVP), unfair advantages, channels, customer segments and revenue streams. Another important topic was the revenue model, which determines how a company or a supplier of a product is compensated for
each of the business service provided. Our revenue model is shown in Figure 1 below.
We had a meeting after the lecture, where we discussed the problems so far and figured some possible solutions to them. The goals were set for next week as well as the date for our next meeting.
Week 44
On Tuesday the 27th of October we had a group meeting. The aim of the meeting was to gather our insights on the project, prepare for the pitch, set up programming partners for the following week and to set our goals for the next few weeks. The goal was met and we agreed to meet next time on Friday the 30th of October.
On Friday we had the pitching session. We had prepared a kick-ass presentation that would have blown everyone's minds, but sadly we weren't one of the three groups chosen to present their pitches. The pitches were good and the evaluations after the pitches were even better, especially the ones given by the audience. Although we didn't get to pitch our product, we learned a lot from the session. Our subject isn't actually very 'pitchable' or marketable, as it is mostly useful for research purposes, but we learned a lot about presentations in general nonetheless. The awesome pitch slides we made can be found below.
After the session we had a meeting with our contact person, where we learned new stuff about the code and experimented around a bit with the cylinders. We are by now pretty familiar with the code and it is easy to try new stuff. However we have not yet achieved a working model with two small cylinders connected by a spherical joint as the helix. However new ideas for the approach were formed.
On Friday we had the pitching session. We had prepared a kick-ass presentation that would have blown everyone's minds, but sadly we weren't one of the three groups chosen to present their pitches. The pitches were good and the evaluations after the pitches were even better, especially the ones given by the audience. Although we didn't get to pitch our product, we learned a lot from the session. Our subject isn't actually very 'pitchable' or marketable, as it is mostly useful for research purposes, but we learned a lot about presentations in general nonetheless. The awesome pitch slides we made can be found below.
After the session we had a meeting with our contact person, where we learned new stuff about the code and experimented around a bit with the cylinders. We are by now pretty familiar with the code and it is easy to try new stuff. However we have not yet achieved a working model with two small cylinders connected by a spherical joint as the helix. However new ideas for the approach were formed.
Week 43
This week there was no common lecture. We had a meeting with the contact person on Friday the 23rd at 2 pm. In the meeting we decided to model the helices as two shorter cylinders that are connected with a spherical joint in the middle. We also decided that we should test how the PhysX forces work and to test the forces on the helices and the joints. This is done only on some helices with some probability, and our task is also to find out which probability produces structures that are soft but still rigid enough to stay together and upright reasonably. Some sketches of the ideas about the spherical joints connecting the two cylinders are shown in Fig. 1.
We decided to have a group meeting on Tuesday the 27th of October to combine our ideas and knowledge, as well as prepare for the 2-minute pitch coming up on next Friday and to set up programming partners for the next week.
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| Figure 1. Sketches of the DNA helices from our meeting on Friday 23rd. |
Weeks 41 to 42
On week 41 we introduced ourselves independently to the code and learned how the functions in the code work and how to use them. On Friday the 9th of October we had no common lecture, but we met with the contact person. In the meeting we figured out three alternatives on how to proceed:
1. To make the DNA helices flexible by separating the cylinders into smaller pieces and connecting them together with revolute joints.
2. To modify the springs or the joints between the current helices to find a softer formation of the structure.
3. To add random forces acting on the helices to the model.
The goals for the next week were set to get more invested in the program and study the PhysX libraries, especially the rigid body dynamics and forces and to get the programs working for everyone.
On week 42 we had a common lecture on Friday the 16th of October on the topic Lean Startup. We designed a logo for our group and wrote out the target clients and target end-users for our product. In the lecture we also made some foil hats and held a 3-minute pitch about our product. The pitch was evaluated by 2 fellow groups using the feedback capture grid, which is shown in Fig. 1. We then had an exercise on how to use the Lean Canvas model.
We had no meeting this week because of busy schedules on both sides. We decided to next meet on Friday the 23rd.
1. To make the DNA helices flexible by separating the cylinders into smaller pieces and connecting them together with revolute joints.
2. To modify the springs or the joints between the current helices to find a softer formation of the structure.
3. To add random forces acting on the helices to the model.
The goals for the next week were set to get more invested in the program and study the PhysX libraries, especially the rigid body dynamics and forces and to get the programs working for everyone.
On week 42 we had a common lecture on Friday the 16th of October on the topic Lean Startup. We designed a logo for our group and wrote out the target clients and target end-users for our product. In the lecture we also made some foil hats and held a 3-minute pitch about our product. The pitch was evaluated by 2 fellow groups using the feedback capture grid, which is shown in Fig. 1. We then had an exercise on how to use the Lean Canvas model.
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| Figure 1: Feedback capture grid. |
We had no meeting this week because of busy schedules on both sides. We decided to next meet on Friday the 23rd.
Sunday 18 October 2015
Project plan
Posted below is the project plan, which gives an explanation of the challenge given to us and maps out the path we are taking to accomplish the task.
Thursday 15 October 2015
Week 40
In the beginning of week 40 we arranged a meeting with Abdulmelik Mohammed from the DNA simulation team to get a better view of the project. The meeting were to take place on Friday the 2nd of October.
In the meantime we got directions to get acquainted with the previous work by reading the article that was published on rigid-body DNA simulations by the Natural Computations team. In addition, we installed Autodesk Maya and a plugin for it called vHelix. These would be used throughout our work so it was important to start getting familiar with the environment.
We also had a group meeting on Friday, before meeting with the contact person from the team. In this meeting we set up the rest of the communications platforms that were to be used between the group. For instant-messaging purposes we chose to use Telegram, as it is easily accessed on smart phones, as well as computers and tablets. For work-related communications, Slack was chosen to be the main communication application and Trello as a "virtual post-it board" to e.g. help keep track of things that need to be done and their priority order.
For easy and well-organized file sharing we chose to use Google Drive, as it is also available on many platforms and it is simple to keep all the shared data organized through Drive. As for the blog, Blogspot (or Blogger) was chosen as it seemed to be a suitable choice with a straightforward interface and ease of use.
After the group meeting we met with Mr. Mohammed at the Aalto Computer Science building. We learned a bit more about DNA and the previous work, as well as about the way the soft-body simulation will be working. We talked about limiting the subject and our goal to only concern the simulation of the DNA double helices as soft bodies instead of rigid rods, as the schedule may be too tight for also concerning the probability of some double helices missing and so forth.
We concluded the meeting by deciding to next get better acquainted with vHelix and to try compiling the scaffold-routing code by ourselves using Visual Studio. A next meeting was set to take place on Friday the 9th of October in the project workshop room.
Working hours up to this point.
In the meantime we got directions to get acquainted with the previous work by reading the article that was published on rigid-body DNA simulations by the Natural Computations team. In addition, we installed Autodesk Maya and a plugin for it called vHelix. These would be used throughout our work so it was important to start getting familiar with the environment.
We also had a group meeting on Friday, before meeting with the contact person from the team. In this meeting we set up the rest of the communications platforms that were to be used between the group. For instant-messaging purposes we chose to use Telegram, as it is easily accessed on smart phones, as well as computers and tablets. For work-related communications, Slack was chosen to be the main communication application and Trello as a "virtual post-it board" to e.g. help keep track of things that need to be done and their priority order.
For easy and well-organized file sharing we chose to use Google Drive, as it is also available on many platforms and it is simple to keep all the shared data organized through Drive. As for the blog, Blogspot (or Blogger) was chosen as it seemed to be a suitable choice with a straightforward interface and ease of use.
After the group meeting we met with Mr. Mohammed at the Aalto Computer Science building. We learned a bit more about DNA and the previous work, as well as about the way the soft-body simulation will be working. We talked about limiting the subject and our goal to only concern the simulation of the DNA double helices as soft bodies instead of rigid rods, as the schedule may be too tight for also concerning the probability of some double helices missing and so forth.
We concluded the meeting by deciding to next get better acquainted with vHelix and to try compiling the scaffold-routing code by ourselves using Visual Studio. A next meeting was set to take place on Friday the 9th of October in the project workshop room.
Sunday 11 October 2015
Week 39
We had our kick-off meeting on Friday the 25th of September, where we introduced ourselves to each other and started getting acquainted with the project subject: Soft-body dynamics simulation of DNA. Our team consists of six members, of whom two are systems analysists, two physicists and one information networks engineer, everyone with a programming background.
After the introductions we had some team-building exercises that helped us figure out the direction we are heading and find out about some of our strengths and weaknesses. In one of the exercises we reflected on our preferences of our own roles in a team using FourSight evaluation. We evaluated how much each of us were oriented towards the following roles: Clarifier, ideator, developer and implementer.
As a result of self-evaluation, we found out that while our team is strong on clarification, implementation and development, we are not as strong on ideating. The result indicates that our team consists more of realists than visionaries. This could however be further improved by first noticing the shortage of ideators in our team and then focusing on trying to think outside the box, looking for more creative ways of thinking and venturing beyond our comfort zone during the ideating process.
Next we constructed a trend analysis around our subject to map out the possible fields of applications for the finished product. We chose to use the wave model of the trend chart, as this seemed to be a clearer way of presentation. Some of the current trends we thought of included medicine and drug industry, fitness and supplement industry, 3D printing and nanomaterials. All of these could benefit from an accurate simulation of structures composed of DNA meshes.
After the exercises and the official part of the workshop lecture we agreed on forming some preliminary ways of communication and to sort them out better in the next meeting when we would have all of the members present.
After the introductions we had some team-building exercises that helped us figure out the direction we are heading and find out about some of our strengths and weaknesses. In one of the exercises we reflected on our preferences of our own roles in a team using FourSight evaluation. We evaluated how much each of us were oriented towards the following roles: Clarifier, ideator, developer and implementer.
As a result of self-evaluation, we found out that while our team is strong on clarification, implementation and development, we are not as strong on ideating. The result indicates that our team consists more of realists than visionaries. This could however be further improved by first noticing the shortage of ideators in our team and then focusing on trying to think outside the box, looking for more creative ways of thinking and venturing beyond our comfort zone during the ideating process.
Next we constructed a trend analysis around our subject to map out the possible fields of applications for the finished product. We chose to use the wave model of the trend chart, as this seemed to be a clearer way of presentation. Some of the current trends we thought of included medicine and drug industry, fitness and supplement industry, 3D printing and nanomaterials. All of these could benefit from an accurate simulation of structures composed of DNA meshes.
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| "Wave-model" trend analysis from the workshop session. |
After the exercises and the official part of the workshop lecture we agreed on forming some preliminary ways of communication and to sort them out better in the next meeting when we would have all of the members present.
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