The night before, we set off doing the requirements separately. By the end of the night, China finished a basic pitch for our presentation as well as a powerpoint. I was able to make a brochure detailing our application's performance and aims. Before i left the house this morning, i printed off a couple of the brochures.
I remember being told to not arrive late to the studio no matter what. It was suggested that we come 10 minutes early even, to set up and get ready. For this reason, i took the earlier bus that i usually take (in case the one i usually took was late) and ended up coming 30 minutes early instead of 10 minutes early. The waiting period was as boring as watching paint dry. Finally, it was 2pm and the rest of the studio also waiting outside the room forwarded in. My group was still no where to be seen.
Immediately once in the room, different groups started automatically setting up. In a matter of 5 minutes, all whiteboards and TV screens were taken up. In this 5 minutes still none of my group members had come. Oh the awkwardness of me sitting there alone pretending to be distracted by my phone while everyone else diligently started hanging bright posters everywhere in their professionally dressed clothes. The embarrassment was real.
Other groups were all professionally dressed, had at least one A3 sized poster, brochures etc. One group went so far as to even bring large white curtains, stands, decorative statues, an extra table (with matching white table cloth), at least 10 brochures and flowers??? Needless to say, their dressing attire was also spot on. It was kind of like they were a real business coming in to advertise their application. I actually spoke to the group members yesterday and they told me all this was going to happen. I thought they were lying though!? Apparently, all their props totalled about $85. So speechless.
Anyway, after what felt like the longest time in history, the first of my group members aka China finally arrived. Not long after Bill also walked in. We sort of all sat at our table in awe for a few minutes, watching the other groups show off their obviously much better props than ours. We were only left with our own laptops and the studio computers. So basically all we had was one computer with the application, one with our powerpoint and just a few brochures. No, we did not dress up. No we did not have our poster from last time (which wasnt the idea we settled on anyway). No, we still only had three members at the time.
Anyway, into the studio things started to get alive as everyone started walking around visiting other tradeshows. About 25-30 mins into the contact, Lorna approached us. We welcomed her a seat before we all sat down around her. Then, we just sort of sat there awkwardly in silence for a long time even though we knew she was waiting for us to start talking. I dont know i guess i was just waiting for another member to start talking. So yea i started introducing our application, i explained our design processes and how each of our ideas have evolved over time and why. Finally, i offered her to play the game. Despite our weird articles, shes actually really good at our game???? If i werent a creator of the application and hadnt memorised all the maps to their animals, she wouldve beat me in the game any day.
Moving on, Lorna played the game a few times (each time making us more nervous) until she finally stopped and addressed some issues. At this time, our fourth member Soobin finally showed up. Lorna suggested merging the maps window in with the game and said she was looking forward to see our results page where we would show users all the questions they got wrong. Just as she was about to leave i remembered our brochures and showed them to her. She looked really touched for some reason that i had offered her to read a brochure. She took a brochure with her and left. I did not expect this. I made it so informal. Oh well.
After she left we watched her write down some notes on her paper about us. So nerve wracking. We then decided to write down all the things that we still needed to do, including all of her suggested ideas.
Not surprisingly, and very luckily, no tutors came to our group after this. I think it was because we looked unwelcoming by looking busy doing other things (which was true) like writing down our list of things left to do, fixing codes etc. Often during the contact, some close friends from other groups would come to try our application. Rarely, we would also dare ourselves to venture out of our group to experience the world of much better applications than ours.
This was another group's posters.
This was our group's overall tradeshow presentation.. (by the way, yes i did print more brochures than just two)
..And this was the other group that even took along flowers. okay.
The outside cover of our brochure.
The inside of our brochure. Feel free not to read.
Some users playing our application.
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