The night before our first meeting with our VMware liaisons, all members of DVation met in the famed Stanford d.school to have a preliminary brainstorming session. The point of this brainstorm was to go into our first meeting with some broad ideas of what we wanted to accomplish and what sort of products we wanted to make. Our Project Theme had hinted at applications of Big Data and Data Visualization, so these two themes guided our discussion.
In preparation for this brainstorming session, we all researched different aspects of the space we were to be in. Some of us researched exactly what VMWare does and the products they offer, while others researched the data visualization competitive landscape and other business intelligence solutions. These insights proved to be invaluable during our brainstorm,
Santi, our design thinking messiah, led the brainstorming activity. In true d.school fashion we proceeded with "yes, and..." statements, writing and rearranging sticky notes. We focused on thinking of new and innovative ways to visualize data and give insight into one's business. We made guesses regarding the nature of the data we would have access to via VMWare. We thought of ideas which would leverage our skills and backgrounds, mainly in the area of machine learning.
After a few hours of deliberation, we encountered a few main themes that we all agreed on:
- We wanted to make a data-agnostic product. Sorry VMware, we don't want to make something that only applies to your space.
- We were all allured by the idea of quantifying productivity.
- The idea of interesting info coming to you was consistent. We liked the idea of not having to make queries, but having analytic solutions give a business owner info "before he/she even needs it."
- We wanted to make some sexy visualizations.
With this collection of broad ideas, we felt prepared to meet our liaisons at VMWare the next afternoon.