DS Forums

 
 

Are the tasks a set up?


Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 12-05-2011, 01:31
Aspartame
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Greenock, Scotland
Posts: 8,973
There was an app challenge on Channel 5's The Gadget Show. The winning app was a motorcycle game. Suzi Perry, one of the presenters of the show, won the task. She loves bike racing and came up with the idea. She got a large number of downloads, I think it was in the thousands.
It's actually a pretty good game. Not just some crappy sound board, which is what BOTH of these apps were.

Guess that's all you can get if you've got half a day to design it, and it has to be coded in a few hours overnight.
Aspartame is offline   Reply With Quote
Please sign in or register to remove this advertisement.
Old 12-05-2011, 08:22
VioletSummers
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: London
Posts: 1,341
Although the girls had the more downloads, in my opinion they shouldn't have escaped the boardroom for their dreadful development. From just the concepts I thought that the guys had it in the bag.

The big fuss they made of "market research" was wasted, the people said they wanted a fun tinewaster and I just don't see how AmpiApps fitted that.

Then there was the websites. The girls I think won the bigger promotion because their app appealed() to the global market. However I still think that, although their app fitted the brief, it was utterly pointless. (Although the boy's was only just better!)

Edna's presentation was just dreadful, and I thought that after that there was no hope.

I think that the projects should have been judged overall, but then I guess that as LAS is looking for someone who, no matter how ridiculous their method, makes him a tidy profit on his £250,000 investment, the download figures were probably the most approapriate way to judge.
VioletSummers is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-05-2011, 11:32
cartree
Inactive Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,397
I don't agree that they're fixed, but I do think the outcome is often quite "random". As Tom touched on in the boardroom, if the task was won and lost on whoever secured the Wired (I think) recommendation, the whole task is basically reduced to making an app that that one particular bloke liked. He may have just fancied one of the girls for all we know (that's probably how I'd decide tbh).

The "reasons" that are given as "this is where you lost the task" are always just offered up after-the-event. LAS even started asking the boys "what their business plan for making money out of the app" was (was this even part of the brief?), which they actually had given some thought to, and there was no indication the girls had such a plan.

(The most ludicrous example of this was during the Bus Tours task last series, when that plank was basically given credit for winning the task with his "innovative" idea of giving commission to a third party for tickets they hadn't sold. It was insane.)
cartree is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-05-2011, 13:08
missfrankiecat
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 5,714
Of course the tasks don't remotely reflect real business and what is required to succeed in the real world. In this task, the three sites they pitched to had to choose one or other app to feature leading to downloads, whereas it's hard to imagine 'in real life' that either would have been remotely acceptable. On Tuesday's task, do you really believe any sane person would have been paying £2 for a plastic box containing two grapes and a sliver of pineapple if there hadn't been a camera crew filming the operation? Some of the tasks actually lend themselves to 'teaching' the exact opposite of what is necessary to succeed in business. Yasmina's catering being a prime example in the series before last - she could only 'win' by serving crap food because she didn't have to worry about getting repeat business or any positive word of mouth.
missfrankiecat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-05-2011, 15:45
dimstthomas
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 11
It's actually a pretty good game. Not just some crappy sound board, which is what BOTH of these apps were.

Guess that's all you can get if you've got half a day to design it, and it has to be coded in a few hours overnight.
In the show they were told they could design whatever app they liked. As you said the developers had only a few hours to implement the app. There is no way they could have developed a completely novel app in this time.

I suspect they were given a template app that associates sounds with pictures and they could just customise it using whatever pictures or sounds they wanted.

If this is true it makes all the scenes where they were discussing the idea for the app fake.
dimstthomas is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-05-2011, 23:49
Karly
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Norn Iron
Posts: 1,177
Sorry, I am a complete techno idiot, but just wondering if anyone checked whether the girls didn't phone/text their friends/family etc etc on the sly and tell them to download them all night when it was free, or maybe that isn't physically possible?
Karly is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 10:44
Amagad
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 275
Sorry, I am a complete techno idiot, but just wondering if anyone checked whether the girls didn't phone/text their friends/family etc etc on the sly and tell them to download them all night when it was free, or maybe that isn't physically possible?
I always wonder whether the candidates are allowed to do this or not! I would post a recommendation of the app on all the large forums I belong to... forget 10k downloads, you'd get millions.
Amagad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 15:02
tellytart1
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: London
Posts: 3,638
It has to be staged.

The first task, the producers would be fairly certain that juice was going to be involved, so instead of ensuring the kitchens had industrial juicers, they gave the teams domestic juicers, which are bound to fail when given an industrial workload. This was designed to cause failures.
tellytart1 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 15:23
tinkie
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 13,496
Apart from coming up with an app, getting T/shirts and signs printed within 24 hours is a lot to ask for
tinkie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 15:35
LadyCake
Guest
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 2,533
I don't think the tasks are set-up , I think they are flawed as a good idea in the long run might not win over the course of one day. Sugar judges EVERYTHING on a monetary basis over a short term. It would be interesting seeing tasks judged on a combination of earnings , teamwork , ideas and presentation but we'd still have disagreements about the winners!

I don't know much about apps but I think the idea that the slang app was offensive is silly if the market is 16-24 , i'm sure ruder apps are available. I'm still wondering about the soup task as we didn't see them buying stock/salt/rolls etc
I bet some of the contestants tell consumers they are from The Apprentice so if they buy some soup/fruit etc they will be on television!
LadyCake is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 15:50
Metal Mickey
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,479
I think that this task was above board, inasmuch as it had a bedrock judging criteria, i.e. most downloads wins, but there are some that make me more suspicious, like the advert ones, where the winner is decided by the heads of the ad agency just on their opinion.

In those instances, I can't help thinking that TPTB look at what result would make the best TV, and steer it that way, for instance by taking an in-every-way superior ad, but having it lose the task because the team forgot to mention the phone number, or some "technicality" like that.
Metal Mickey is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 16:10
Moony
Guest
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 14,710
Nobody outside of the UK (or in it in fact) cares about an app about British accents.
I think thats the crux of it. The task was to go "global" and they kept harping on about going global - but then designed an app that was anything but.

The long and short of it - they got caught up with their ideas and forgot who their potential customers were.
Moony is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 18:51
wmoore
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 550
It has to be staged.

The first task, the producers would be fairly certain that juice was going to be involved, so instead of ensuring the kitchens had industrial juicers, they gave the teams domestic juicers, which are bound to fail when given an industrial workload. This was designed to cause failures.
Don't agree. They were both given commercial kitchens to work in, not a juice factory. If the boys were more organised
they could of used the juicers to juice the oranges.
wmoore is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-05-2011, 21:21
brangdon
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Nottingham, UK
Posts: 11,878
I think that the projects should have been judged overall, but then I guess that as LAS is looking for someone who, no matter how ridiculous their method, makes him a tidy profit on his £250,000 investment, the download figures were probably the most approapriate way to judge.
One thing he's looking for is the ability to keep your eye on the ball and follow the brief, without supervision. He wants people who "get it" and understand what they are supposed to be doing. The boys failed there. It doesn't matter if it was a better app, because it was for the wrong market.
brangdon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 14-05-2011, 11:06
Sharon87
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: London
Posts: 3,639
Of course the tasks don't remotely reflect real business and what is required to succeed in the real world. In this task, the three sites they pitched to had to choose one or other app to feature leading to downloads, whereas it's hard to imagine 'in real life' that either would have been remotely acceptable. On Tuesday's task, do you really believe any sane person would have been paying £2 for a plastic box containing two grapes and a sliver of pineapple if there hadn't been a camera crew filming the operation? Some of the tasks actually lend themselves to 'teaching' the exact opposite of what is necessary to succeed in business. Yasmina's catering being a prime example in the series before last - she could only 'win' by serving crap food because she didn't have to worry about getting repeat business or any positive word of mouth.
It's London! People pay that much for fruit salad anyway.
Sharon87 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 14-05-2011, 11:22
tellytart1
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: London
Posts: 3,638
Don't agree. They were both given commercial kitchens to work in, not a juice factory. If the boys were more organised
they could of used the juicers to juice the oranges.
Yes, and the juicers they were given were domestic juicers. The boys started using them, but managed to burn the motors out, as domestic equipment isn't designed for that level of workload.
tellytart1 is offline   Reply With Quote
 
Reply



Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 00:23.