I am Sidd's blog

Relevant companies: breakfastny.com - Main initial company influence - Digital Agency based in New York known as the ‘Custom tailors of the tech world’ focuslabllc.com - Agency in Savvanah, Georgia that do both client and personal projects elepath.com - Digital agency in San Fransisco, who only create products they want to create. wearefuturegov.com - Company working for profit alongside aiding and developing government websites. wonderroom.com - Company in the southwest - part of Plymouth University, working with vaired projects from print, to web deisgn to installations. nickcharlton.net - Freelancer graduated from university, now running his own 9-6 business while running research/self-development side projects. n9design.com - Local graphic communication studio, working in the relevant field. Contacted people/companies: wearefuturegov.com - Contacted and interviewed Ben by Chris. rokkmedia.co.uk - Spoken to the founder breifly at a networking event, found ...

We filmed our elevator pitch today. Doing this we decided we were going to approach it by actually filming ourselves talking to unsuspecting 'victims' in an actual lift about Bento to see what they think, and whether or not they actually understood what we were. We had a sort-of-script that we used, which we very, very loosely stuck to. We talked on the fly mostly about the company, trying to embody our goals and vision in the way we talked. Filming was done using Chris' GoPro attached to the inside of one of the lifts inside the Roland Levinsky building on campus. Here's the result: The results were definitely mixed. There were many who didn't really seem to be with it, but mostly because they were evidently rushing around Roland Levinsky trying to get deadlines done. However we got quite a few good responses who really seemed to enjoy the idea.

So after much deliberation and focus on getting our mission, vision and some of other core ideals of Bento set in stone on content we began the work our presentation. It took a lot of thought to decide on the content of the presentation. To begin with we took our mission, vision and some core ideas. A lot of it had to be cut out to properly format it in the form of a presentation. Another thing we had to sort out was roles. We set about creating two roles for each of us, one more technically oriented and one business oriented. Knowing where each of our strengths and weaknesses were, Cai's role was fairly easy to define as the Lead Designer and Creative Director. However both Chris and I are primarily developers, so this was a little tricky. We decided to name me the Lead Developer and Technical Director, while Chris went with Interaction Developer and Managing Director. While these are great on paper in reality our set roles would be a bit more blurred, put perfectly by this quot...

We decided to make Cai's initial idea, Quote, to demonstrate the research projects we undertake in Bento. Cai made a really nice mockup, and went on to develop the website. I later added in sharing to Facebook functionality. Quote is live here: quote.bento.is

We came up with the concept of the bento.is to allow is to engage creatively with the URL. For example our holding page is bento.is/coming . In future when we launch we could have bento.is/here. bento.is/us could be the team page, bento.is/this could be an about page and so on. The holding page was pretty fun to develop. Cai being our designer made a mockup of the website in Photoshop, which both Chris and I liked. Cai then made a static HTML version of the page and handed it over to me to implement the functionality for the signup portion. We felt this went pretty well and were really happy with the result:

We went through a few names deciding what we'd call ourselves. After a lot of though we settled on the name 'Bento'. This is based on the Japanese bento box. The Japanese bento is a collection of various food items, generally rice, vegetables and meat. This food is placed in individual sections of a sectioned-off shallow box. Bento boxes are generally very well presented, and both delicious and aesthetically pleasing. Here's an example of a bento box from Koishii , a Japanese restaurant that we went to for lunch and to take some photographs for our branding material and website: Feeling that the concept of a bento box related to our ideals we decided to call ourselves Bento. Providing technology, a service and our skills - all of which come together in a nice, beautifully packaged product. For the branding we wanted to embody the following ideas:  Fun Approachable Encompassing our skillset - demonstrating what we do Quality of design Clear readabi...

Once again following a similar process we developed our USP. Cai:  Our USP is that we are working in the future. We have that advantage over competitors, who are working in the past.  Chris:  Our USP is twofold. Firstly we truly enjoy what we do, which inspires us to do the best job that we can possibly do. Secondly that we are working in the future; ordinary items can be intelligent, an ad campaign can be a circuit board, and a public space can react when it knows who you are.   Sidd: Our biggest USP is the fact that we really enjoy what we do - we find our line of work extremely fun and challenging. Chris' USP was clearly the strongest of the three and embodied our ideals very well. Because of this we decided that his one was clearly the one we should use.

We followed the same process creating our vision statement as we did with our mission statement. Here are the results: Cai: We provide clients with a broad skill set, that enriches their product. Through having the leading edge on competition, a premium quality will be met on all briefs, whilst combining this with a fruitful process of collaboration.  Chris: We provide our clients with expert marketing in both the digital and physical space. We work closely with our clients and thoroughly enjoy the work we do. We see ourselves as people who take the amazing power of what can be done online and bring it into real world experiences. We want to bring our clients into the future.   Sidd: We provide you with a friendly, approachable all-in-one service for all your creative and technical needs, from digital installations to complex web applications. We aim to take your brief and through a close relationship, work with you to deliver the best possible bespoke solution; del...

So we sat down together to discuss our mission statement, vision statement and unique selling point (USP). We were all pretty in sync about the core ideals of the company. We decided the best way to come up with a solid mission and vision statement was to go off and each do one. We'd later get together and combine our ones to form the final statements. Here's what we did for our mission statement: Cai:  To be the number one advanced technology agency in the south west of England. Providing clients with products that appropriately meet the desired brief 48 hours before the specified deadline. Retain 80% of customers in future services, through implementing thorough design techniques and combining this with the highest quality standards of work that adapts to the benchmarks of the industry.  Chris:  Our mission is to become a successful digital agency developing in the Future. We will use the new and unexplored industry of physical computing, combined with absolute b...

We sat around and discussed in detail what should be included in the SWOT analysis. Over the course of a few hours we established all the key points of the SWOT together on the Google Docs. Chris later cleaned it up when he went home. Click here to download the final PDF . Just to note, the branding on the SWOT was initially the older iteration of the brand, but we changed the PDF with the re-brand.

To discuss ideas we thought we'd go on Google Hangouts and talk about the company and develop our ideas further. The meeting went pretty well, we discussed a lot of ideas and and gained some valuable time emulating conference calls. We discovered that Hangouts has comical filters so everything went silly. Pictures credited to Chris.

Here's a link to my reflective essay:  goo.gl/ISRcZs

Chris, Cai & I began developing ideas for what would become known as Bento. Throwing around ideas we began going through the eight point list of stuff we need to to. We established pretty early on how our company would function logistically. We are to gain client work within our skillset, such as graphic design, web development and digital installations, using some of the excess funds and time to work on personal and research projects helping us to further develop our skills. We started by talking about the philosophy and values our company's foundation will be set upon. Our Philosophy: Fun Solving Problems Value over hire Multi disciplinary Learning - widening skillsets Choice - choosing our work - choosing our customers Working in the future - internet of things / advanced web design / etc Collaborating Our Values: Great design Improving the world Minimalism - Simplicity Enjoying what we do - pride in what we do Doing what we enjoy Providing a hi...

So everyone pitched their business ides. My one went pretty well. I was pretty casual about it, and managed to answer some question: There were some really cool ones, i quite liked Will's Cyclesense project as it had pretty significant real-world applications and could genuinely improve the general safety of cycling. In the end, however, I grouped up with Cai and Chris as they were heading in more of a direction I would be interested in. The idea was to start a studio that gained funding through freelance client work. The work would be anything within our domain and interest range. This was pretty broad as the three of us are pretty technical. We'd spend our downtime doing community and research projects that we're interested in to keep ourselves active and broaden our skillset.

Bit late on this one. So after much thought I decided to use the FYP house automation idea in the end. Not really because I wanted to, but because it was the best thing I could think of. I began by writing a script, and ended up with this: Hello all, I’m Sidd! Many a time I’ve found myself coming home from work or lectures after a long, hard day. So I finish for the day looking forward to getting home, all I want to do is sit in front of the telly and getting a good meal in me. only to arrive and realise I still have to prepare my meal! I’m feeling lazy today, so I take my meal for the day out of the fridge and or freezer, stick it in the grill and or oven, which I have to wait to pre-hear, only to wait another twenty or so minutes for the food to be done before I can turn my brain off and relax. Wouldn’t it be great if it was done just in time for when I got home?   Now you might be asking yourself; “But Sidd? How is such a feat possible? How could I magically cook food with...

So we were tasked to come up with a business idea for Venture Culture. I generally consider myself to be pretty okay at coming up with ideas, but in this case it was a business idea. Trying to come up with a cool idea that's a viable, profitable business is pretty tough. Normal my projects are pretty much entirely oriented around fun and creativity - without profit or any kind of financial gain in mind. The ideas will be taken forward to the class, and a small handful of the favorite ideas will be chosen to go forward. This will then lead onto the chosen ideas to effectively become group projects that will be developed into a viable business plan over the year. I immediately thought of my final year project - mostly because I had been working on this for the last couple of months, and it was pretty prominent in my mind. I was really hesitant on using this as there'd be a conflict of interests, and obviously the FYP has to be an individual project. It was time to put the bra...