So it was a really long and tiring night... but there were some interesting ideas presented. There weren't really any that I believed in enough to work on for the final assignment, but I did see merit in some of the ideas.
My Anxiety and Jadeye
For example, Jadeye.
I've had bouts of anxiety due to stress before, and it was a problem that I felt was too trivial to specially go to a psychiatrist or counsellor for, and yet was affecting me physically and mentally: insomnia, panic attacks at night. I tried an app called Pacifica to calm myself down, and it offered similar features to what Jadeye proposed, with journaling and calm breathing exercises in the app.
The unique feature that Jadeye provides would be the ability to contact a certified therapist. Contacting a therapist over an app does feel much more convenient than going to the hospital or a private practice. I might have used it, but I am quite price-sensitive as a student with limited budget.
However, it remains to be seen how much it can actually help the people it is trying to reach. For me and Pacifica, the journaling feature was too much of a hassle eventually, and just typing to myself wasn't helping much. In the end, it was talking to a friend and taking a breather to come to terms with my own state of mind that solved my anxiety.
Rehashing Existing Ideas
As with most pitch events I have attended, there are always one or two ideas that are rehashes of something someone has built before. The thing with these ideas is that the pitcher might not know of the product that had come prior, but someone eventually brings it up and explains the downfall/success of the existing product and asks how the pitcher can do better than before.
You can't just dismiss or ignore the similar products that have walked this road before. On one hand, you can learn from them, see what they did wrong, and then improve over that. On the other hand, you might see what happened to them and realise that this road might lead to a dead end due to factors out of our control.
For the proposed anonymous Facebook messenger, one of its prominent predecessors was Secret. It had the same basis of being an anonymised platform comprised of only people you know. After a quick Google search, you can find that it eventually closed down due to malicious comments, racism, etc. Basically anonymity brings out the asshole in people. Who knew?
I felt quite sympathetic to the pitcher because of all the negative feedback he received. I've also had an idea that had already been implemented by others. In a nutshell, making it easy to order food in a group. My idea was similar to Orderlyst, which had been created by one of our tutors, Sam Yong, previously. I happened to ask him for feedback without knowing that he had created Orderlyst, and he candidly shared with me what happened when they made Orderlyst. Basically it didn't go well.
I've personally tried implementing my idea and testing it in my internship company. I did two different versions: a Slack bot and a Meteor web app. I iterated on them based on feedback from the users in the company, who used it to order lunch. While they were open to trying it out, they needed lots of prodding to actually use it. Eventually they just reverted back to doing a copy-paste of the list of orders.
My enthusiasm was quite dampened by the experience, I kept wondering, hmm I thought I already made it as easy to use as possible, why are they still doing copy-paste? In the end, the answer is probably: copy-pasting is faster and easier.
Sam faced the same issue, if I remember correctly.
I have still been turning this idea around in my head, considering it from different angles, but I haven't actually tried to implement it again. In the end, it doesn't feel like anything could be easier than copy-pasting. If anyone does manage to think of something, do try it out and let me know if I can join you. :P
So my point is: some pains may not be able to be solved, because the existing painful solution... is actually already the least painful. Hum.
Your thoughts on this, guys?
It's also possible that people are resistant to change and that contributes to part of the pain when adopting a new solution. Over time, when people are used to it it might be better instead.
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