Two days after the graduation and two days before the project review with Professor Boyd, the anxiety of the project is at its peak. I have been monitoring the survey and the responses regularly. Although at this point the responses have completely stopped, we still want to wait and see if we get a couple of more responses. Although I haven’t analyzed the data completely, most of the responses are extremely interesting. Based on the responses that I read and our qualitative research I have suggested a couple of recommendations for the client. It has been exciting to work on... Continue reading

The past week has been busy and stressful. With the final presentation day approaching soon I was getting stressed about not getting respondents for the survey. The survey was almost dead for a couple of day with no respondents. Social media was a big disappointment to get survey respondents. Most of the pages and groups have a high security filter that eventually blocks all links that you post. So 90% of the links that we posted were either blocked or ended up getting displayed only to the admin as a guest post. Ross and I then managed to get a... Continue reading

Last week we finalized our survey after testing. There were a couple of changes that were required in the survey and after making them our survey was all set to go. Our survey needs minimum 120 respondents for it to have a reliable analysis. The sample size is somehow making me very nervous. We had a tough time finding fire fighters for our qualitative interview and 120 seems like a very large number currently. We passed on the survey to all the firefighters we interviewed and one of them mentioned that he emailed the survey link to a group of... Continue reading

This week we worked on analyzing the various similarities and differences from our qualitative interview. We have designed our final survey framework to get the survey tested and ready for final distribution. We are planning on testing the effects of rational messaging versus emotional appeal messaging by manipulating the form of media. We are positive that the survey would get us good data to analyze and conclude our hypothesis and provide a meaningful recommendation to our client. From our qualitative interview we realized that price could be a major challenge for our client’s product. Through our survey we are also... Continue reading

Last week we had our second project review with professor Boyd. In this meeting we discussed the various issues and possibilities with our project. After this review we have a definite direction to go. We realized we needed to dig even more deep to market the product successfully. It wasn’t just important to understand the product, but it was also important to understand the world around the product. We were sticking to very basic aspect of the world-the fire fighter and his needs. But we needed to assess the entire world of firefighters. Professor Boyd also told us to finalize... Continue reading

It is July already and almost half way though our capstone period. Our qualitative interviews are turning out great. In our status call last week, Erik was very pleased with the insights we provided from our last interview. In this meeting we also discussed the change in target demographics. Going further, Bailout is only going to target Professional firefighters and not Volunteer fire fighters. Our secondary report supported this. Conversations of different fire fighters that I read across firefighting forums mentioned how Volunteer fire fighters would hesitate to spend huge amounts for tools. Erik also liked our proposal for testing... Continue reading

Last week after presenting the charter to our client we received some feedback on the technical changes to the product. The product at this phase is going through the final iterations and getting ready for its final appearance. Erik was over all happy with the way things were going so far and the proposed direction for the project. We had our first project review with Professor Boyd and I was worried that we would be told that our project isn’t working as it is supposed to. With Capstone, I have always been worried about what exactly is expected and what... Continue reading

This week Ross and I have been working on our charter. We have been working on the scope of the project and estimating the time we would need to achieve the project objectives. We have sent a rough draft to our client and are waiting for his feedback. Our challenge so far has been getting qualitative interviews with the Fire Fighters. We have a couple of them planned for the coming week. We have an interview scheduled with Captain of the Loveland Fire Department this coming week. We are hoping to get some good insights to get working on the... Continue reading

In the past week I spent time connecting with firefighters on various social media platforms. Ross and I felt the need to connect with fire fighters from other departments without any prior knowledge to the Bailout system so that we could understand the value and need of the product among other fire fighters. As such social media was not very helpful. I also joined a fire fighter’s forum online to connect with fire fighters from all around America. A couple of Fire fighters responded back to the post I updated in the forum but I did not get any insights... Continue reading

After our initial meeting Ross and I worked on various steps and alternatives we would need to get out project started. The very first step involved getting to know the product thoroughly. During the beginning of the week we had scheduled a meeting with Erik to see the prototype of the product on Tuesday, May 31st. Erik had mentioned in the first meeting that the product from its very conception has gone through many iterations. They had developed 2 prototypes before they finalized this final product design. The latest final product is far more compact and lighter than the previous... Continue reading

Even before I officially started studying at University of Cincinnati, I had heard a lot about the Capstone Project. In the past two Semesters all I heard my batch mates say was how Capstone was a lot of work and a lot of sleepless nights. The opportunity that capstone would offer always sounded exciting. But hearing what everybody had to say, I was always skeptical if I could meet every expectation. For my Capstone I will be working on a project for a startup company- Bailout, along with my classmate Ross. Bailout is an innovative self-rescue system for fire fighters.... Continue reading