Does it matter if their products would never work?
spkx
Posts: 14,870 Forum Member
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So the Girls have come up with a heated jumper for cold weather... but that is powered by sunlight... and they hope two tiny solar panels would provide enough power? That's even before we consider the safety/fire implications, not to mention also drawing power for a phone charger and lights.
At least the Guys' product was doable and I could see a tiny niche for it, like GoPro type cameras
At least the Guys' product was doable and I could see a tiny niche for it, like GoPro type cameras
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The heat pack could also provide targeted relief if it could be controlled by an app - it could relieve back or period pain if you could select to just target one area.
The lights... nah! Naff in the extreme.
Well that of course goes for all wearable tech, surely? There must be ways. There are waterproof cameras so I imagine it's not too hard really. Another option would be to just make the camera removable, although then it does become even more just a jumper with a GoPro stuck on the front.
In any case, I'm only comparing it to the Girls product which wouldn't get close to getting off the ground, even if they got some 'imaginary' orders
The solar panels could provide a small amount of heat as well, but nothing like enough to have any pain relieving qualities. Is period pain normally felt in the upper body? To control it via an app you would need a wireless receiver too.
A solar powered phone charger jacket would work or at least it would extend the battery life somewhat, and that would also give off some heat. But what if you wanted to charge your phone on a hot day? It wasn't thought through. But they did sell some on the basis that it could be redesigned to be practical.
The boys product, thought up at the last minute, did work but putting a camera on a sweatshirt was stupid. The only place for such a thing would be on some kind of hat, so it took video at eye level of what you were looking at and could easily be taken off.
No, it's not actually that important. The task is mostly about:
* Being able to manage / work as part of a team
* Produce a product that the buyers will like - they could have made the camera-jumper more desirable to JDSports if they made it as part of a t-shirt.
* Being able to pitch a product.
Ending up with a product that has lots of features and is not what the buyers would like is usually an indication of a poorly managed team.
Since the product isn't actually that important, it's actually not important for the PM to have knowledge of either fashion or technology. They just need to find someone who does and manage them and the team well.
As for the sweatshirt, I think it was the 'on air' on the front that let it down. Filipe (Is that his name? Last project manager?) was right, it looked like a Christmas jumper. They should have just researched what an actual on air sign looks like and emulated that.
Edit: Although, thinking about it, the reason for the awful products may be people in the teams deliberately going for an awful product in an attempt to get the team leader fired.
I don't actually blame either team for how poor the lights looked on the garments. They were shown, by example, that miniskirt. So when they asked for LEDs, I'm sure they were imagining something of that quality. What they got was Christmas lights.
Perhaps they should have asked "will these lights look like that skirt or like you've gone down to B & M and bought a 99p LED strip?", but I can understand why they didn't. At the very least, the company making the products came out of it looking just as bad as the teams themselves.
Secret cameras near children is a bad idea don't you think?
Replace the sweat-shirt with a t-shirt / running top and pitch it at people doing activities well away from children. Eg, rock climbing or base jumping.
The only thing "pervy" about the camera was that it was at around cleavage height. Google Glass has a camera built in, that's much more secret than a camera on a sweatshirt surrounded by LEDs.