This week we decided on our client - Greenade, an Asian fusion food truck on campus! We discussed potential team structures and deliverables for this semester. We also decided on some action items for each associate to complete before our next meeting. We intend to use the information collected to guide us through preliminary client research. Outside of the team meeting, we had our first workshop this Wednesday- Resumes & Boba!

This week, we introduced our new members to the UMBRA family!  After a few icebreakers, we proceeded to discuss our goals for the year as well as a few expectations we have. After discussing potential clients, we led the new member orientation to explain design thinking and answer questions about consulting.

This week, we started the meeting by going over the contract that all associates need to sign to stay in the club. We are going to be more strict on attendance this semester because it is detrimental to the whole club when people miss meeting. Then, Parker gave a presentation on more UMBRA curriculum, more specifically, ideation. This is the brainstorming process that we use every semester to identify problems and decide what we want to work on. We then participated in a How Might We exercise. In this exercise, we split into our families and first individually brainstormed different how might we's that we could potentially want to work on for this semester. Then, each family picked their top HMW and individually brainstormed potential solutions to that question. After all of the members of the family brainstormed solutions, they identified to longest shot, most meaningful, most rational, and simplest solutions. Each family then  shared these HMW's and top solutions. We compiled a list of the top two HMW's from each family and then took an org-wide vote on the top 3 options. We have identified the top three projects we would most like to work on. This week, the officers will research and contact organizations that we could potentially work for/partner with, depending on which project we move forward with. 

Family topic: How Might We improve UMBRA?

We started this meeting going over a few administrative/housekeeping items including dues and the progress of our Wonders and Worries (W&W) project. The officers met with our contact Alex Gabbi, who will be using our slide deck in his pitch to venture capitalists. We also updated the rest of the team with the unfortunate news that our project with Joe had fallen through. So, we spent the majority of the meeting today going over the design thinking process to get our new associates up to speed and refresh the minds of our old associates. Parker went through the UMBRA Design Thinking Slide Deck to show the associates how we have progressed through the six stages in the W&W project and where we are starting over for this semester. Then, we moved onto a slide deck about understanding empathy. 

Looking forward: the families will be meeting during their times this week and submitting their problem area ideas for discussion next week. 

We had our second meeting of the semester and made a lot of great progress! In order to include everyone and get as much done as possible, we split into three teams. The first team was Financial. They were in charge of doing market research into what an app will normally cost and how investments in start-up apps typically work. The second team was App Design. They were responsible for coming up with mock designs for how every element of the application will roughly look. This included the homepage, messages, account information, settings and more. It was important for the App Design team to create a mockup that had continuity and could fit into the Pitch slide deck seamlessly. The final team was the Pitch Slide Deck team. They were in charge of finalizing all of the information on the slides, formatting everything, and adding results from the survey into the presentation when appropriate. Later on in the meeting, the Financial team and Pitch Slide Deck team combined to insert the financial information into the slide deck. After both teams completed their portions of the project, the App Design team sent their completed part to the Pitch Slide Deck team so that the two could be put into one cohesive presentation. Then, the combined slide deck was sent to our client for feedback.

In our meeting before Thanksgiving, we first touched base on the progress of the project. This allows for our associates to get a sense of all the work we have done and where we are headed. Following a framework helps us not lose control of time. Rhea then presented the survey results that have been collected so far. The survey results helped us realize the gaps between what we had originally planned for the prototype and what the public actually needs/wants. 

We then began to discuss the details. This included discussion on whether or not in-person meet ups are necessary/possible and how complex the application should be (in regards to extra features).

After we get back from Thanksgiving break, we'll go over any new survey results and start making concrete decisions on what the end result should look like. 

It's been a while! We've been hard at work on our project since we found our client Wonders and Worries. We are working with a UT Professor to help Wonders and Worries create a platform for teenagers to be able to connect and communicate throughout the coping process. 

Last week, we split into three teams: survey, introduction, and competition. The survey team was in charge of compiling the survey questions we drafted the meeting prior and creating an interactive online survey to be sent to our contact. The introduction team was tasked with starting the slide deck that will be used to pitch the idea to investors. The competition team researched similar companies and alternatives that currently exist to find what makes Wonders and Worries unique. 

This past weekend, ten of us went to Austin Panic Room for the second social of the semester. We did the Cabin Fever room and got out with over 6 minutes to spare!! It was a great bonding experience and everyone had a lot of fun. After, we went to Torchy's for dinner. 

We started meeting today by going over the survey one more time and making any last minute changes necessary. We then worked on creating Positioning Statements for both Wonders and Worries and the application/platform to be developed. This includes information such as mission, target audience, point of difference/competitive advantage, direct/indirect competition, and reasons to believe (why this can solve the problem better than the competition). 

Then we split back into our three separate teams to continue working on the project. We ended the meeting by splitting into pairs to discuss details of the app.

Today we started off meeting by doing a couple of icebreakers so that the new members would feel more comfortable in the organization. After this, Steven presented the curriculum that we follow each semester so that members are up to date on where we are in the project timeline - we are currently still in phase 1. The officers reminded the Associates that this is the last week for us to pick our project because we really need to get started as soon as possible. During this discussion, Parker pitched two possible leads for us to pursue this semester. Ria and Sabrina also brought up potential ideas.

For the second half of the meeting, Steven introduced the concept of empathy mapping. Then, we split up into groups of 4 to create an individual empathy map for three problem areas that were identified from last meeting. 

Announcements: Our first social will be this Sunday at Parker's house! It will be a chill night for everyone to get to know each other. 

This meeting was the first meeting with all of our new members! We spent the majority of the meeting getting to know each other in small groups as well as the full group. In order to get the new members up to date on how UMBRA works as an organization, the officers did a quick overview of the curriculum that we typically follow in a semester. Since we are still without a client, we then broke up into small groups to discuss problem areas that we face on a daily basis. Each group presented their ideas to the rest of UMBRA and we discussed the practicality of each issue. Next week, we will hopefully break ground on our project.