Sprint 1: Kicking-Off

In the first 2 week sprint starting our Capstone project with Interdigital we found ourselves defining the project, meeting our corporate sponsor, and diving into the expansive field of immersive technology.

Meeting the Team

We began with a team charter and role assignments. We identified a couple of things that were most important to us as a unit — creating a final product we could be proud of and living up to the expectations of our roles.

A snippet of the team charter we began to build out, starting by identifying our individual strengths and weaknesses

What do we know?

On a shared Figma board, we pasted down our project brief and set to work annotating it with post-it notes. We identified what do we know about the company and what they need from us? What don’t we know about the problem space and from the project brief? The scope of this project is broad and ambiguous, both daunting and rife with opportunity. With a slew of emerging technologies to consider we decided to start our general research.

In a Figma board, we pasted our project brief and used color-coded sticky notes to identify what we knew and what we still needed to find out

Secondary Research

We each picked an area of emerging technology — Internet of Things, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Mixed Reality, and Biometrics. Looking at several articles and scientific papers, as a group we gave each other a broad overview of our understanding of the emerging technology and the role it played in Digital TV. There is a plethora of research to explore in these areas and this by no means indicates that we’re done with research. Rather we wanted to identify areas of interest and opportunity to look into further and to shape our eventual primary research.

Kick-Off

Ending the week was a meeting with the InterDigital team. We began with an on topic icebreaker question (You’re trapped on a desert island with only a TV. What show do you bring), a review of findings from previous research at the company, and a Q & A session about the project brief. We then moved into a mind-mapping exercise to look at connections with TV and the future, followed by an experience storytelling exercise focused on memorable experiences with TV and emerging technologies.

Different memories and components identified by the InterDigital Team related to Digital TV and Emerging Technology

It was exciting to see the team engaged in our activities and actively participating. The space is broad and touches on key memories and feelings for a lot of people relating to social experiences with TV, shows they feel strongly about, and family gatherings. We also got to speculate about the tech we were excited about and how we had seen it used — like technology you could use during the pandemic to have people buy a seat at a sports game and receive an auditory experience as if they were sitting in that seat.

A mind-map identifying intersections between television and the future

Next Steps

As we move into the next week, we’re looking to firm up our primary research plan and start recruiting users. It feels like we’re getting into the full swing of things very quickly. More to come!