Chadwick Wingrave Presents Creativity to Product Crash Course

Throughout the process of the Unisys/Walnut St. Labs’ Prototyping Competition (#ProtoComp2015), the Walnut St. Labs team regularly congregates to plan the coordination of its upcoming installments. Each week, we find ourselves continually saying, “Surely this week we’ll have a smaller turnout and things will finally start to dial down”, and each Wednesday we are confronted with just how high the level of extinction rate truly is for this event. People are so excited to come back each week, learn new things and show us made they’re made of. It’s been super exciting!

We’re ending out Week Two of with almost every representative of each team present for tonight’s bootcamp and advisement sessions. Despite the fact that we’ve tailored a variety of content to aid in the process of building a User Interface, much of the wireframes’ architecture is left to be imagined by the group. It’s inspiring to see each team form uniquely interesting approaches and finding different means to execute their directives.

At such a pivotal stage in the competition, teams are responsible for transitioning between throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks to turning their best ideas into a tangible and organized deliverables. Brainstorming is one thing, but really sculpting one’s ideas into an effective end product is an entirely different animal.

Breaking out of our existing thinking, to create an innovative and effective product, is as much inspiration as it is process. Chad Wingrave hit on what it means to be creative and what is takes to turn those creative juices into a product, or productize it. He discussed the methods to rapidly explore design ideas, and end with approaches for quick and dirty evaluations that shape further design.

#ProtoComp2015 is breaking new ground. We’re creating a platform for interested parties to learn new skills and be given the chance to build something new, in a collaborative and supportive environment. We want to see our community grow and adapt with us and we’re incredibly grateful to see how incredibly enriching the entire experience has been for all involved parties.

Traditional methodologies have suggested that organizations lacking in immediate or specialized internal skills to necessary to execute new projects should focus on more cost effective solutions, like outsourcing. Within recent years, the wide spread organizational pivot to outsourcing has all but taken over. Countless creative projects have since been redirected towards crowdsourcing solutions and the momentum by our account seem to be picking up.

Crowdsourcing changed the game and provided a new way to keep creative efforts cheap and local. Instead giving away all our creative potential to other countries, lets put our heads together and create something awesome! Jim Thompson illustrates, “I truly believe this is what the future of R&D looks like. Forget outsourcing, nothing quite like collaborative organic development to challenge the status quo and get out of the box. Think of it as Crowdsourcing 2.0!”

Week One: The Competition Begins

The Launch Party last week was a total blast, but the real ‘meat and potatoes’ of this project, the creative core, has only just begun. We were floored to see the extent of community interest at #ProtoComp2015 launch, and were futhermore encouraged to see that almost everyone who partied with us last week, not only signed up, but showed up for Week One to compete.

The teams got the Unisys’ backstory from Jim Thompson, the VP of Software Engineering and Supply Chain. He was able to shed some light on the Unisys’ 118 year-long challenge with building design elements, that began with the typewriter.

Local UI and UX Designer, Peter LoBue, explained that to create an effective user interface design, you must test assumptions with potential users and incorporate your findings into the design process. Peter showed the power Rapid Prototyping by explaining the process of tweaking prototypes over time to get the desired feedback, while also visually showing how to document your findings.

Peter introduced a UI design tool to the #ProtoComp2015 team that is taking the design world by storm. InVision is making  the designer iteration process so that virtually anyone can take a solid design idea and create a professional-grade design element, or wireframe. InVision’s work to created such an accessible utility seem like the perfect candidate for a competition such as our with an identical mission.

Kyle Nahrgang of Unisys shared how Agile + Scrum methodologies streamline team-based software engineering decisions and action plans by encouraging thorough organization and constant feedback. With Agile + Scrum, a team will have a clear understanding of the work that has been done, is being done and will be done. This crash course focused on the basics of what Scrum is and how it’s helpful.

Very few places in the United States are opening their doors to facilitate conversational level technology education, and offering an inclusive opportunity to build something from scratch in a creative group environment.  The work we’re doing is setting the pace for what for-profit organizations and educational institutions will do in the future, and we don’t take this lightly. We’re grateful to all the people that collaborated with us on Week One and we can’t wait to see what comes out of Week Two. Thank you for recognizing that the best way to buck ‘Status Quo’ obsolescence is to actively work towards the solution. Walnut St. Labs is raising the collective consciousness of technology one event at a time. Join us.