Production Assistant

Production Assistant was my fourth year project and an idea for a business venture. After spending two and a half years playing StarCraft (SC) I noticed a lack of tools for players to improve their fundamentals. I also noticed from my streaming / coaching days that people would pay for help improving.

Knowing that our fourth year project would have an entrepreneurial component. I seized the opportunity and spent a large part of that summer developing the foundation of which to base our project around.

The following is the presentation that I prepared for our business pitch. There are many specific details about how StarCraft is played which I don't feel are necessary to cover. If you would like any more information or a copy of the slides please just contact me.

By the way, slide 20 through 47 is a comprehensive recap of pretty much all the surveying that I did of people. At first I resented the work they wanted done. The main idea was to talk with as many potential customers as possible to figure out what the customer really wanted. These interviews would then be coded to help us determine what the customer really wanted.

I should be clear that I resented the fact that I thought I already knew very well what the customer wanted. In fact I was only partially right. All the technical details I wanted to include in the project were correct. The primary misunderstanding that I had was just how much people wanted to be instructed. I wanted to give people the possibility to instruct themselves. Most people don't want that. Not in SC anyways.

I designed the following poster for our design fair. I was quite limited in what I could do but I am happy with how this turned out. It certainly stood out in comparison to other peoples posters.

*Final poster for our design fair that I designed*

*Close up view of what is on the poster. High level players are GM and the lowest level players are BRONZE. More red below the 6 minute mark is bad as it indicates inefficiencies in play.*

This was the other part of our program. Click on the image if it is hard to see. Notice the difference in gaps between the red and blue lines as well notice how the BRONZE player has many more black bars on the bottom. These elements are describing … — This was the other part of our program. Click on the image if it is hard to see. Notice the difference in gaps between the red and blue lines as well notice how the BRONZE player has many more black bars on the bottom. These elements are describing player performance.

We had two laptops set up for our booth so that people could battle each other. At the time we had a website set up and fully functional. I have since took it down because we decided not to continue with the project and there were a few monthly charges. I really wish I got more pictures of the website because the guys did such a great job on it.

*Instructing one of the participants about his results*

In the end we decided not to continue with the project. We each had different reasons. My reason was because my life had moved away from StarCraft by the end of this project. I was now engaged, my streaming partner and I had a falling out. I could no longer see or wanted a future in StarCraft.

I was very happy with the experience I got as a project manager. For a group project things ran very smoothly and we had a great group dynamic. People were placed in positions that helped them excel and we worked consistently which helped us deliver what we promised.

Of course we had one group member who didn't pull his weight, but on a positive note we had a group member who did a complete 180 degree turn and became a huge help with the website.