Startup Week

C E D A R C I T Y S TA R T U P W E E K E N D Project Presented By Steve Oliver

2014

Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups!

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About My Startup Weekend An intense Thursday night through Saturday of exercises, pitching, brainstorming, and ultimately the creation of prototype start-up companies presented to investors, sponsors, and judges.

As an organized individual, I like to have a well planned week without many distraction. However, the day of Startup Weekend, Thursday, April 10, I was introduced to the idea and took a leap of faith of sorts and spontaneously decided that this could be a great opportunity for me to network and test the waters on how a fast pace startup company might be ran.

After 16 individuals presented business ideas, the 50 plus in attendance all voted for our top three pitches that had the most realistic potential to actually be a business. After all the voting was accounted for, there were only eight teams left. By the end of the night only six remained because two groups couldn’t recruit enough people to make it work.

With only three graphic designers in attendance, I was a “Rockstar”. The other two graphic designers were from Northern Utah and were partners, so they wanted to continue to work together, so I had my pick of who I

wanted to work with. It was very motivating to have people fighting for me, even though they haven’t even seen my work.

I initally selected my team, not because I thought they were going to win

Despite not doing well in the end, I feel the experiance was one of the best things I could do at my current stage in life. It taught me very valuable lessons, both positively, and not so positively.

With only three graphic designers in attendance, I was a “Rockstar”... I had my pick of who I wanted to work with. anything, but because I thought as a designer I had the best possability to actually push myself and showcase my work to potental future contact, and feel like I contribute positively in helping my team solve problems and make them look good.

Unfortunately, because of the lack of communication, and other little factors that didn’t seem to be a problem, turned into huge issues and we completely failed at the finishline.

The highlight was being able to make a great contact with Justin Jenkins, one of the coaches and a graphic designer. He never helped me with my design, but was able to give me some great advice.

Overall, It was a fantastic experience.

I had the chance to meet many interesting people.

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Home Screen

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The Project Spoticka is a social media game application that allows its users to offer up a “bounty” or badge to promote an event, location, or just a place to hangout with a group of people with similar interests.

Though the project of Spoticka was selected as one of the highest voted at startup weekend, I wasn’t really sold on the idea, and didn’t even vote for it.

However, When looking for a project that I could be most valuable, I thought it would allow me to showcase my abilities as a graphic designer, as well as allow me to create something I could possibly put in my portfolio.

After meeting with my team I sketched out what I thought the first few screens should look like, and then started a draft of the logo. The look I wanted was a clean transparent feel, so the user wouldn’t focus on the buttons or “shell” of the app, but the content that was in the app itself.

The logo, I thought, should also be clean and modern, so I went with a simple Gothem font with a strategically off balanced blue dot, or “spot” in the name Spoticka.

Design and functionality of Spoticka.

The following will describe the photos and order of screens designed.

1. Home Screen: simple, minimal, and easy to navigate. It features a map of the world with the Spoticka icon marking its users location.

2. Log In or Register: Pressing the desired button will take the user to the appropriate screen where they can enter in their user name and password, or log in with their Facebook account.

3. Main Menu: A map indicating the events and badges associated with that event is displayed ready for the user to select their next move.

4. Event Selected: Selecting a desired badge icon will deploy a screen that will inform the user additional information about the selected event.

5. Create Event: Clean, easy to read is the idea behind this screen. It allows the user to create an event, and select a badge to attach.

6. My Badges: Easy search navigation and showcasing the collected badges is the focus. Making sure the badges are the centerpiece of the screen was the desired outcome of this screen.

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Log in or Register

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Main Menu

Event Selected

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Create Event

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My Badges

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DESIGN | Steve Oliver PROJECT | Typography II