Design Build 2/2020 — individual progress report (SOPet)
— Bhakamol Intanil (SOPet)
Week 1 & 2
For this week, the team has tested and discussed about the website that Indian developers wrote for us. The website is functioning well, but the appearance is very simple and not attractive, as well as containing a lot of bugs. We afraid that if we launch the website, it is possible that customers might encounter these bugs, which can make them unsatisfied with our service and could potentially affect our reputation.
This is how the current website look like.
For this reason, we decided to hire a new developer to fix these issues. The new developer agreed to write a new website for us by improving the code from the current website. The developer required us to send him a new website user interface design by January 30. Therefore, my task for week 1&2 was to design a website UI, together with Chawin and Best (Kophong), who offered to help us design the website UI.
Figma is used as a tool to design the interface, here are how some of the new interfaces look like so far.
Week 3
For week 3, I finished all the UI design for the website pages I was responsible for, including vet appointment pages, which is the feature that we are planning to launched later on when the website is more stable. We had a talk with the developer as well as letting him check our interfaces design. He gave us some suggestions on the design, which we later fixed, and asked us to provide him all the required files for website development (which consist mainly of the vector/.svg files of the graphics on the website). The developer also suggested us to design a new logo as well as design and create our own graphics/icons/symbols to use on the website to avoid any possible issues related to copyright infringements. These will be my tasks for upcoming weeks.
In addition, me and the team also had a meeting with our mentor, p’Tan, on Saturday 6th, Febuary. The meeting consist of a brief update on our progress and milestones, Q&A session, and a lesson on OKR (Objective and Key Results). pTan mentioned on benefits of using OKR framework and how can it be used as a tool to promote growth of a company. He also let each of us come up with our own OKR for SOPet as well. The task he assigned us to do for this week is to combine all member’s OKR and create one big OKR for SOPet.
Week 4
On week 4, the UI design is almost complete (only a few 1–2 pages left). I started going through all the UI pages and list all the graphics, icons, or illustration that I need to recreate. The graphics include mostly pet illustrations (dog, cat, bird, rabbit, rat, etc. and service type symbols (chat, call, and video call).This week the team also had a meeting together to update on the current situation and update on what each teams are doing, as well as discussing on further plans.
For the weekly meeting with p’Tan, we discussed further on our personal OKRs. p’Tan let us explain and ask each other a constructive questions as well as giving some comments. At the end of the class, we dicussed on the team OKR that came from all the members’ combined. Together, we discussed on further plan and how are we going to follow the OKR, as well as writing a new more realistic OKR for the year 2021–2022.
Week 5
My tasks for this week still focus on designing and illustrating graphics for the website. This week I started to design and draft some of the graphics (mostly pet icons). Adobe Illustrator will be used further to transform the drafts into vector files so that they are compatible with the website.
This week we also had a team meeting to discuss about business model improvement and possible future business expansion/plan that would help us increase our margin, as well as discussing on our 5 years financial projection.
As for the mentoring session with p’Tan, in the beginning of the session we focused on homework from last week which is creating a more realistic OKRs for the year 2021–2022. Then, we moved on to the second half of the session, in which we discussed about the technical management of the website. This part of the session was delivered by p’Film. p’Film give us advice on the agreement process with the developer. She advised us that we should create a sheet that contain specific functions/flows of the website with a specific timeframe for the developer when arranging an agreement with them. This is to avoid any possible issues/unsatisfying outcomes that can happen from misunderstanding.
Week 6
This week I finished most of the icons I needed to design for the website, which include all the pet illustrations. I used Adobe Illustrator to create all the icons as they need to be in a vector file format (svg.) to be compatible with the website. During the process, I had some difficulties using the Adobe Illustration as I was not familiar with program. I needed to watch some instructions on Youtube before getting started. All the icons that I designed and created for this week include dog icon, cat icon, bird icon, rabbit icon, and hamster icon. Below are how they look like.
In addition, this week we didn’t have a mentoring session as p’Tan was not available.
Week 7 (Midterm Exam Week)
Since the midterm exam was happening this week, we decided to take a break from our tasks as well as skipping a mentoring session with p’ Ronnie and p’Tan to prepare for the upcoming exam.
Week 8
For this week, I helped Best (Kophong) on finishing the final part of the website UI design, which was to make the design more compatible with mobile phone. We also had a meeting with both of the developers (Pétanque and Kong) to get an updates and insights on the progress of the website. Moreover, we also had a big meeting with all the members to discuss on any possible problems that can happen with the website when we start to launch and operate. For example, any possible causes of unexpected disruption during the video call with the vet. We together brainstormed all the possible problems and how we can prevent them from happening.
Week 9
This week p’Tan wanted to have a face-to-face mentoring session with all the team members, including the developers, so we decided to hold the session at the faculty on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, both of the developers were busy with the university entrance exams so they couldn’t attend the session. p’Tan introduced us to an activity on customer journey. He began be giving us 8 post-it each and ask us to imagine and illustrate a situation of a hungry batman until the batman is full solely by drawing. Each drawing are given a very short time. He then let us combine the drawing of the situations together in a flowchart. He then repeated the activity 2 more times, but with different situations that are more related to our project. The other 2 situations are a pet owner with a sick pet without SOPet and a pet owner with a sick pet with SOPet. The activity allowed us to see a clearer and wider picture of the flow and the customer journey when using our service. Moreover, p’Tan also assigned a more clearer teams and responsibilities for each members as well. The 2 major teams include a team that focus on increasing revenue and basket size and a team that focuses on the development of the website. One other team is products owner who coordinate all the teams and kind of belong in both major teams. I was assigned to be a UI designer, belonging in the website development team.
Furthermore, on Monday Dr. Pietro took us for a tour at TusPark WHA to as well as to talk with them about office renting in the future. They also agreed to let us use the co-working space for free for 2 months.
Week 10
As I have already finished my assigned task, which was the UI design, there are not many things for me to do this week. Nevertheless, I am thinking of redesigning the logo but I still couldn’t come up with anything good. Also, after the mentoring session with p’Tan on Saturday, we found that our team is somewhat lack of communication as some of us still didn’t really know the progress of our website development. I believe it was because we haven’t had a team meeting physically for quite a long time. For this reason, p’Tan suggested that the team should meet face to face at least once a week to maintain the good teamwork and to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Therefore, we meet at the faculty on Wednesday afternoon to talk about everything that is going on, update on tasks of each departments in the team, as well as to discuss on our future plans. We also had a small discussion with Dr. Pietro who offered to talk to Huawei for the cloud services that we could use for our website as well.
Week 11
For the usual mentoring session on Saturday, p’Tan wanted it to be a ‘clinic’ session so he let us run the whole session by ourselves by letting us update on our website progress and he would ask us questions as well as letting us as him about anything regarding the website development. The session was split into 2 parts in which the first part being the part for the ‘increasing the basket size team’ and the second part being the part for ‘UX/UI team’. The ‘product owner team’ needed to be in both parts of the session as the coordiater between the 2 teams. Moreover, during the weekly team meeting, we have discussed about the UI and the progress of the website development. We found out that there were some pages that have not been designed yet, which are the dashboard pages for vet side, customer side, and admin side, in which each requires a different UI designs. Each dashboard pages also contain several different sub-pages as well. Therefore, these are my tasks for the next 2 weeks.
Week 12 (Songkran holiday week)
As week 12 was Sonkran holiday, we did not have any mentoring sessions with both p’Tan and and p’Ronnie. However, we do had internal meetings within our team. On Monday, we had a meeting with the 2 developers in which they updated us on the progress of the website development and demonstrated us how the website works and how it looks like so far. We had also discussed with them on several inquiries we had regarding the website development. We also had another meeting on Friday to update on the progress of each team and to discussed about company registration. As for my own task, My tasks for this week were still on the design of the dashboard pages. So far I have completed the design for ‘My Profile’ pages for both vet and user side and the ‘My Pet Information’ page for the user side.
Week 13
This week I finished all the UI tasks, which included mostly the design for dashboard pages for vet and customer, for both on phone and on PC. This meant the UI designs are all completed. We had a meeting with the developers to update on the progress of the website, which was progressing very well. Everything was almost ready except for some less additional pages such as about us, or terms and conditions page. The developers explained us the flow of the website. On Saturday we had our weekly meeting with p’Tan, which, once again a clinic session. p’Tan let each team update on their progress as well as letting Chawin introduce to everyone a new business model analysis that p’Tan assigned him to do a few weeks ago. p’Tan let each of us ask and answer to each other questions relating to the new business model. On Sunday we had again a meeting with the developers. This time the call and video call functions are now ready and they let us test the functions. We scheduled to meet again with the developers on around 28–29th April for the final check up of the website.
Week 14
There were no individual tasks for me this week as the final exam is approaching and there were many assignments to get done. However, on Wednesday we had an internal meeting to update on the progress of the website with Best Kophong and to plan our roles and scenarios for the final check up of the website. On Friday we had a meeting with the two developers for the final check out of the website as planned. It turned out that the website was still not ready as there were still some bugs to be fixed. Therefore, we decided to give them one more week to finish the website and if the website is still not finished by then, they will have to pay us a compensation. On Saturday we had a usual weekly meeting with p’Tan. p’Tan let us present a strategy deck that he assigned all of us to do. p’Tan then again let us ask each other questions as well as exchanging ideas.
Week 15
We decided to halt any tasks for this week to prepare for final exams. We also didn’t have mentoring sesssions with p’Tan nor p’Ronnie. However, we did have a meeting with the programmers on Sunday, May 9th to update and check up on the progress of the website. Most of the website’s functionalities are ready, with minimal bugs. The website still needs some minor fix on the design and contents. The website is expected to be uploaded to the server and launched within this week.
Week 16 (final exam week)
In this week, the website is finally completed and was already uploaded to the server. It is now undergoing some minor bug fixes and is expected to be launched for operation within this week or next week. The website can be visited via sopet.co. We also prepared our pitch deck for our Design Build II final presentation. I was the one responsible for the pitching for this semester. As for mentoring session with p’Tan this week, since it was our last session p’Tan let us reflect on what we have done through out the year via various activities.
Overall, our progresses did not really meet the milestones as there were issues with the website development, which require find the new developers and restart the website development procress.
