Young Innovators Visit Cucumber
18/02/2019
Last week, Cucumber had the pleasure of hosting 2 winners from the Young Innovators Awards 2018. They were spending time with us as their winning ideas were an app and a website and the goal was to help them develop their idea further over the 2 days they were here.
Charlotte from Aquinas College won the Junior People's Choice Award with Coathanger "An app that allows the user to view online garments on their body before buying."
Josh from Mount College won 3rd place in the Junior section with Teen Jobs "A website that connects teenagers to employers and individuals, looking to get a job done."
For more details of their YIA submissions and to watch their video, go to YIA Past Winners
One of the main frustrations of shopping for clothes online is that you never really know if the clothes will fit you - so the buyer often has to return the items which is a cost to the supplier as well as the environmental impact of so many unwanted deliveries.
Charlotte's smart idea was a way to see how clothes will look on you. Using the standard size of a doorframe, you take a photo of yourself so that all your dimensions can be calculated relative to the doorframe. Charlotte's app would be built into the apps of well-known clothing retailers. The app would be a benefit to both the supplier and the buyer and will lead to fewer returned clothing items.
We helped Charlotte to mock up some app screens in order to show the user experience. Using screenshots from North Beach, the process is shown below. The user logs into North Beach and then is taken to Charlotte's Coathanger app where they upload their doorframe photo.
The user is browsing the North Beach online store and for any clothing that appeals, they can virtually try it on to see how it looks - switching sizing, colours and patterns as they see how it looks.
Josh has already gone one step further with his idea. Since winning 3rd place, he has built the Teen Jobs website by himself, it is live online and there are many teenagers already signed up. There is even a SunLive story here. This gave us a great opportunity to review a live site, make suggestions on improvements that could be made and help Josh set up some detailed analytics tracking.
If you want to see the website, and even better interact with it - go to Teen Jobs
This is the agenda we ran through with our interns over the 2 days:
Wednesday 13th Feb
Kick off at 10am start.
What does Cucumber do?
Interns to present their business idea
Lean Canvas each business idea (“Lean Canvas promises an actionable and entrepreneur-focused business plan. It focuses on problems, solutions, key metrics and competitive advantages.”)
Key functionality required for each prototype
Brand definition to be used in prototype
Finish 4pm
Thursday 14th Feb
9am start
Working through your thoughts from the previous day around branding and audience
(Charlotte) Working with Kyle to start designing the screens required to create a prototype.
(Josh) – Working with Nick to go through a Digital 101 looking in to search engine optimisation and Google Analytics tools (and any actions required).
Finalising prototype for Charlotte. Josh to make website changes and asking questions of the Cucumber team as required.
Written by Nick Baker & Kyle Turner
