Tuesday 22 March 2011

A Summary of FoodGenie



Description
You've been there, staring inside your fridge loaded with ingredients but just don't quite know how to put things together to make a nice decent meal. Or have you come across an awesome recipe that you really wanted to try out but just missed that one important ingredient required for that recipe?

Now, you don't have to worry about these problems anymore! FoodGenie comes to your rescue!!

FoodGenie is a cool iPhone app that gives everyone a chance to become a super chef and helps your neighbours in cooking. It helps ordinary people (like you) make extraordinary dishes with what you have in the fridge. When there is a really important ingredient missing, it helps you find that missing ingredient by encouraging sharing of ingredients between neighbours. Guess what? You may get to know some really cool neighbours in your building!

So what are you waiting for? Check out FoodGenie now!!!

Made by Jammers:

Dhairya Dand
Emma Zhang
Ken Zhu
Shawn Foo

Check out our project page on Planet Jam: FoodGenie

Monday 14 March 2011

Global Service Jam is over, what now?

After 3dee wrote such an insightful post-jam reflection, I have no idea what to write anymore. Guess I'll just post some random thoughts here and hope that somebody will care to read this.

I've never participated in a such a competition like Global Service Jam before. It was a memorable and exciting experience for me (I would not say once in a life time, because I'll definitely be participating in more events like this!). Although Singapore probably has the least number of jammers in the whole world (Singapore is a small country after all), we managed to prove ourselves to the rest of the world that "we can do it" in those crazy 48 hours! We had the COOLEST logo and the BEST project page (or at least I thought so)!! We were so proud of ourselves when GSJ headquarter tweeted about our logo and project page during jam!! THANK YOU ADAM AND MARKUS!!! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!


For me, the ideas-throwing process was the most enjoyable and most exciting one. I felt relieved when there was finally an opportunity for me to share my little crazy ideas with someone else besides myself! My biggest dream is to see one of my ideas turn to reality and been used by everyone around the world!! I think Global Service Jam is a perfect way to realize this dream!! Although the projects we jammers make still have a long way to go before they can become real services used by people, at least the ideas are out there shared by so many people around the world. I think this is the first step to developing new, cool services and products!!

Ok, I think I've rambled enough. I still haven't got time to look at the projects by other jammers yet. My studies and projects are piling on me. AAAARRRHHHH!!!! But I guess after all groups have submitted their projects and dropboxes, Adam and Marcus are having a hard time surviving too!! Well, good luck to them! We really appreciate their time and effort in putting everything together for this awesome event!!! (Why am I still using the royal "we"? I guess I'm too used to it after tweeting as @GSJ11SIN!)

Lastly, I really want to thank Prof Adrian for bringing this event to Singapore and involving me in this competition!!! You're awesome!! Please organize more events like this!! Next time it'd be great if your "physical form" is present instead of just your "spirit". Sounds kinda creepy... Ok, I shall stop talking now!

...Maybe just one last sentence. TO EVERY JAMMER AND ORGANIZER AROUND THE WORLD, XOXOXOXOXO!!!

Sunday 13 March 2011

Post-48 hours: Reflections

Our take-aways:
  • The team has to be balanced. It requires a magical mix of design, tech, entrepreneurial and social skill sets. I am glad we had them all!
  • When you are looking for problems to solve, the first place to look out is your own daily life - this ensures a. its a real world problem. b. you empathize with the problem c. you're passionate about it - if for no-one else, you'll at least solve it for your own self! FoodGenie solves our own problems!
  • It is easy to get caught in the fascinating world of ideas and designs, STOP! build your idea - if it will take considerable resources - mock it up. Building and seeing your idea taking shape will present you with an understanding far more realistic than the design and ideation process.
  • Focus and dedicate! In our case the 48 hour constraint was enough to put us back to the desk - maybe putting the same constraint on day to day work yield good short-sighted results!
  • And last but the most important - have FUN while doing it!

And here's what we (Shawn, Ken, Emma and me) created in 48 hours -


Thanks to Prof. Adrian Cheok and Dr. Newton Fernando for all the support!

-Dhairya

Saturday 12 March 2011

Second Jamming Session!!



Second day into Global Service Jam Singapore!! The atmosphere today was a little different from yesterday because everyone was busy working on the prototype. The room was unusually quiet...felt a little strange after the exciting discussion yesterday.

Friday 11 March 2011

The Pacman(girl) Diary

Our jam team was doing the prototype today. We are all trying to become superheroes! But before that, let's become Pacman!! I found this awesome Pacman helmet lying by the window of the lab meeting room. It's SOOOO CUTE!! I even thought of making a video of me wearing this Pacman helmet chasing people on the streets! It'd be hilarious!! I wonder where did they get this from! It is from Namco, the company that invented the original Pacman. I guess someone must have bought it from Japan. I really want to bring it home! Whoever bought it please give it to me please!!!




Lonely Saturday Morning

On a fine, cool Saturday morning, we came to our JAM location at 10am. The lab we are working in was completely dark!! Nobody was here! Not even a ghost! Very unusual for such a lab where everyone works like crazy!


Thursday 10 March 2011

First JAM Session



Photos from the first JAM session yesterday evening in the Mixed Reality Lab. We had lots of fun, lots of interesting and crazy ideas been thrown around here.