The project entails an online social platform that provides solution to new entrepreneurs and aspiring businessmen to reach like-minded people to team up, share funds and start a business. As part of the community dilemma, the social community makes it easy for anyone looking to start a business or learn more by communicating to other experienced business professionals. The social platform would also feature a mobile app that mimics all web features and more.
Many young entrepreneurs and students have brilliant business ideas that they wish to start. However, they lack the funds to start over or they are simply in need for a partnership with some other skill set. It has always been a challenge to find a platform dedicated to the needs of young entrepreneurs. Thus, this forms the rationale of the project; a dedicated business platform to allow people to form partnerships, discuss and form businesses.
The project aims to fill in the gap between LinkedIn and Kickstarter, that are primarily focused on employment and crowdfunding respectively. Thus, it is different from LinkedIn as it is not focused on employment but rather the initial startup phase of a business which includes forming partnerships, sharing mutual funds and discussing confidential ideas under strict confidentiality.
The project also differs from Kickstarter as the project does not rely on crowdfunding but rather sharing funds by mutual agreement between two or more parties. The project will harness the power of social and mobile computing to achieve its aims. An online website will be established that provides its users with a directory search of user profiles, discussion forums, private message (confidential), partnership formation and fund sharing agreements. A mobile app will mimic all the web features in addition to the convenience a mobile phone offers.
The approach to the concept is as follows:
Users would be able to create accounts (profiles) for interaction. Account creation would only be possible with a valid ID card and bank account.
People would use the discussion forums to share their past experiences and learn from other business professionals publicly
Most business starters are hesitant to share their ideas publicly in fear of a cloned idea. However, they need to share their idea first in order to form potential partnerships. Thus, the user would be able to private message and engage with another party one-to-one with brief details. This conversation will be recorded for both parties and the original idea would be recorded beforehand which may be used in the court of law as evidence of the original idea, before the conversation began.
Users may form a partnership after engaging in private messages and settling on an idea. By forming a team, they would be able to sign legal documents online to confirm their partnership (which will be stored on the servers as record for both parties). They will be able to declare their fund sharing plans and related financial decisions online (which will also be recorded and stored on server). Finally, the transactions will be possible on the platform and the bank details of users would already be in the database at the time of user registration.
Unfortunately, it is possible that people may attempt to fraud. However, the recording of conversations, a valid ID card, bank account, legal documents and other required information is stored at each step to minimise fraud activities. All information would be provided for legal defence.
| Name | Student Number | Roles | Skills | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hui Ee Chua | 43863480 | [email protected] | Front-end, Back-end | HTML, CSS, Java, JavaScript, Python, Graphic Design |
| Mehroz Abbasi | 43515181 | [email protected] | Team Leader, Content Investigator, Mobile app developer | Apple Swift, iOS App Design, UX Design, Promotional material |
| Haoxiang Zheng | 44256810 | [email protected] | Front-end, Back-end | Java, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, UI Design |
| Kaho Ha | 43995783 | [email protected] | Designer, Content Investigator | Graphic design, HTML, CSS, UI Deisgn, Python, Java |
| Yaxin Cui | 44450672 | [email protected] | Designer, Front-end | HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python, Graphic Interactive Design |
Front-end developer: Responsible for any front end development for the application
Content investigator: Finding new technologies that support the creation of the app. Create team discussion and brainstorming.
Mobile application developer: Responsible for developing the mobile application
Back-end developer: Responsible for managing the back end functionality for the application.
Designer: Responsible for designing all the UI content for application.
- All members are responsible for logistics. E.g.: meeting outside of workshop hours
- All members are expected to have their own laptop or other electronic devices for working together during meeting
Decisions will be made collectively as a group ensuring every team member’s ideas are taken into account. In case of discrepancies, the decision will be based on a voting system; in the case of a tied vote, we will consult with the tutors or the course coordinator to assist with any problematic decision.
The team will conduct an intervention with the poor performer in order to address their lack of contribution to the group. The remainder of the group will decide if their reason/excuse is legitimate or understandable. If the conflict is not resolved, the team will reassign the work and course staff will be notified of the incident.
The team will maintain the meeting in every weekly scheduled studio session and will flexibly arrange additional meetings as the work deems it necessary. Facebook is the main online channel for the team to communicate, adopted, explain the choice. The email will be used for sending information. Team members will be expected to check these communication channels frequently.
Files will be stored in google drive which will be sharing to all the group members. Content and purpose will be used as naming conventions for files.
To develop this B2B application, the development cycle includes numerous stages, such as research, requirement, design and construction. Our team should follow the plan of the project life-cycle in order to achieve the final success in rest of the semester. In following sessions, detailed project plan will be list.
Firstly, we need have a deep understanding of our chosen domain and idea. Our research should include the existing similar product in order to understand the differences between our idea and the product in the market and think about our strength. Our research is not only limited to the background information gathering, but will also develop paper or digital prototypes, which are able to help us to make improvement on our idea by going through tests.
In this stage, we need to gather the requirement from our target audience. A clearly requirements instruction will be very helpful for the development process. The requirements could be collected through the following methods.
We are able to search from Internet or other existing report to gather the existing user behavior study.
We will launch some quick surveys and interview questions. We can collect information directly from our target audience.
Provide user user opportunity to do testing through paper prototype. We are able to improve our user interface based on the result of test.
In this stage, we are likely to use paper prototype to design our interface and layout, which is friendly to modify and has lesser cost.
Coding will be used in this situation in order to produce more natural and working frontend interface.
- Idea confirmation
- Requirement gathering
- Product backlog
- Interface designing
- Database designing
- Paper prototype designing
- User feedback (Critique)
- Application development
- Implement functionality
- Final prototype
Since we are trying to develop application on both web side and mobile side, multiple type of languages could be used in this project. PHP could be chosen as the web side development language, because it is a wide used programming language for web. It has a great extendibility and compatibility. For the frontend development, bunch of technologies could be used such as HTML5, CSS, JS, jQuery and JSON.
For the mobile development, IOS could be our choice since some team member has previous experience on it.
For our design part, Adobe Ed could be our choice. It is a lightweight UI design tool, which just same as sketch. It has great compatibility with Adobe series software such as Ai, Ps.
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