Mobile Discovery

For past eight months me along with my MEM friends are working with Mobile Discovery, a revolutionary startup organization which would redefine the future marketing solutions for advertisers (Call it Marketing 2.0, if you wish). Our role is to carry out a Beta test in CWRU which would help them glean how Mobile Discovery would be accepted by consumers and more essentially to prove their technology to wireless carriers. A quick and simple way to define this technology is “Hyperlink for mobile phones”. A 2d code is just a pattern of black and white colors in a rectangle, but in it is embedded the information about content. You need to download a software on your mobile phone (300 KB-1 MB, depending on the cell phone) called Scan life which turns your “mobile phone into scanner” (Powerful caption to get attention). So, all you have to do is make sure you are connected to a network (Wi-Fi or a data plan provided by wireless carriers) and open this application and you are ready to scan 2d codes and access the content. To download and get going, register at http://www.mobilediscovery.com/ (but as of now access is limited to Case community only).

Potential of this technology lies in the fact is that it makes print advertisement interactive, by letting users scan and know more about the product/service that advertisers are trying to sell. Experience of carrying out this test has been really useful to us and Mobile Discovery. We would be pushing our efforts in the remaining one month. I would be updating here more about our progress and results. To read more about the ongoing trial, please read:

http://www.cio.com/article/178853/Scan_Your_Way_to_the_Next_Party_University_Tests_Mobile_D_Barcode_System
http://observer.case.edu/Archives/Volume_40/Issue_19/Story_2495/
http://blog.case.edu/case-news/2008/01/29/2dcodes

Program Manager Interview

So, after weeks of preparation, I interviewed with Microsoft on March 13, 2008 for Program Manager Position. I interviewed with Office sharing Services and Outlook group. Usually you need to have 5 interviews to have a strong chance of getting a full time offer. Sadly, I just got three; now if that means rejection, I don’t know yet. I am not optimistic either. I did fairly well in first two of my interviews and probably got slightly relaxed in third one.

Overall the time I spent preparing for Microsoft, has given me a new perspective on product design. I believe I missed the chance very narrowly and should have gone in my favor. But, I want to continue my learning in the area of new product design especially understanding the customer’s requirements and specifying them. I would write in more detail about my interview and what all resources I used. I focused lot of my preparation time in understanding customer requirements and doing various design cases for new products. In retrospect, I should have spent some time on user interface designing. My UI design in 3rd interview wasn’t at par with ideas I generated for the design case given to me.