Press Release & Aamulehti

We are in the media again!

• Aamulehti: Tästä projektista kilahti palkinto

• ePressi: Vincitin tiimi voitti Demola-projektin Suomen ensimmäisellä kaupallisella älylasisovelluksella

Translated version about the press release below:

Vincit's Team Is The Winner of Demola Projects With The First Commercial Smart Glass Application in Finland

Published: 20.01.2015 klo 09:01
Publisher: Vincit Oy

 

Vincit's five-membered team has won the Demola Autumn Season 2014. In this competition, Vincit's student team created a smart glass application for traffic wardens in Tampere. With this application the traffic warden is able to see right away if the parking ticket has been paid or not. The city of Tampere is piloting this in early spring time 2015. 

 

”Vincit's team started this project with the open-minded attitude. They worked hard and the roles in the multicultural team were clear – everyone had his/her own job, which was done excellent, praises the Facilitator and Head of Demola Tampere Ville Korpiluoto. ”Also the work of Vincit in a role for project partner was great. The offered help and support, but they didn't control the progression of project too much.”

In Vincit's student team, there were Hanna Remula and Essi Pihlajamäki from Finland, Ali Waris from Pakistan, Philipp Weitz from Germany and as a project manager Tugberk Duman from Turkey. ”Tugberk's role as a project manager deserves a special commendation. He was inspriring and pushing forward at the same time, towards the team members and Vincit also. In this kind of project the role of ”locomotive” is important and Tugberk did this job excellent.”, Korpiluoto tells.

The City of Tampere joined the project open-minded

In this project the student group developed the first commercial smart glass application in Finland. With this application the traffic warden is able to see right away if the parking ticket has been paid or not. The application is also getting the information from the Trafi's database and sends the information of parking ticket to the traffic wardens database. The application is developed with Google Glass and it is easily transferred to other smart glasses. 

In this project the City of Tampere has proved that also the public services can easily take part of new innovations and get benefits of that as fast as possible. ”There is used much time, money and energy in the process of designing new projects in public services sector – instead of just doing and trying, like in start-up business.”, notes the Customer Relationship Manager Petri Suhonen from Vincit. ”We didn't wait for the City of Tampere to do the proposal – instead we let the students start the developing process and offered it to the city for trying and developed further. In that way we saw right away the benefits of this new service”, continues Suhonen.

The experiment in Tampere was succesful and the feedback positive. The parking department is piloting this application this spring.

Winner of Demola Autumn 2014

The winner of Demola Autumn 2014 is... Google Glass for Traffic Warden!

The Last Few Weeks: Awesome things going on!

The year has changed and there has been happening a lot!

Firstable - because of the hard work, and the successful cooperation between the team, City of Tampere and Vincit, the piloting deal of Google Glass for Traffic Warden has been made between Vincit and City of Tampere. There has also been really serious conversations with other cities, even internationally. So stay tuned - something really awesome is going on here!

During the last weeks we have also prepared our final pitch for Demola. Like always - our team is planning to do something different, something interesting and big. Tomorrow is the final pitching day, and we are really waiting for to see also what other teams have created.

Planning the pitch

And last but not least... Because of the succesful cooperation, we have decided to establish a joint venture with Vincit. About that we hope we can tell more in just few weeks. The whole team is really excited about that and waiting for the opportunities that this can bring to us!

Week 12: ERTICO - ITS Conference

On Tuesday we had a chance to present the Google Glass for Traffic Warden project in the Ertico - ITS (European Intelligent Traffic System) Conference. It went pretty well - the people were really interested in our project!

 Essi presenting our project 

Rasmus Lindholm, the Partnership Services & Communications Director of ERTICO 

testing our application with Google Glass.

Demola in the ITS Factory Ecosystem.

Week 11: Interview in Aamulehti

Last week we promised something exciting to happen. So, here it is! Last week, on Thursday we were interviewed by Aamulehti. Aamulehti is published in the region of Tampere, and by its circulation, it is the Finland's second largest seven-day newspaper. 

And here it is: 

 Aamulehti 01.12.2014: Parkkipirkoille kehitetään älysilmälaseja

This summary in the cover of Aamulehti 1.12.2014

The article can also be found from aamulehti.fi

The video is free to watch!

The Team

One of the most important reason for this project going on so succesfully is of course our fantastic team. Our interdisciplinary team consists of five university studends with different backgrounds. We have the knowledge business, user interfaces, user experience and programming - everyone has an important role in this project, and also with helping each other. We would all like to describe our goals, responsbilities, and also tell something about ourselves for you to get know who are behind this project.

Tuğberk Duman

The Project Manager / Business Value

+358414868983, tugberk.duman@student.tut.fi, LinkedIn

Responsbilities in this project:

• Ensuring the feasibility of development plan
• Creating a business model for the end-product
• Communicating the value to the stakeholders & meeting their demand
• Determining and delegating the tasks
• Creating public awareness regarding the project and its end-product

An exciting phase before starting my studies was to win a full scholarship at Okan University for Electrical and Electronics Engineering program. To gain a wider experience in terms of international relations and multicultural environment, I joined the Erasmus Exchange program twice. I spent one semester in Opole Poland as a student which was followed by project engineering internship in Rheine, Germany. Thanks to these achivements and my above average GPA, I was awarded as a “high honour student” in my department. After graduation, I had 1 year of project management experience in the aviation industry. Currently, I am at the end of my master’s degree studies on Business and Technology Management at Tampere University of Technology.

After completing my studies I am looking forward to continuing my career in the Project Management field.

Essi Pihlajamäki

Business Value 

+358505359680, essi.pihlajamaki@outlook.com, LinkedIn

My responsibilities in this project include:

• Business aspects
• Knowledge of cars and parking with ParkMan and EasyPark
• Creating public awareness of the project and the possibilities of Google Glass
• Product testing
• Training the end users
• Stakeholder relationships

I study business in the School of Management in the University of Tampere. I’m an enthusiastic team worker and during my studies I’ve engaged in many activities related to the student organization Boomi ry. I’ve been a part of Boomi’s accounting team, corporate relations team and event organizing team. I have tutored international students from different countries.
 

Before I started my studies at the university, I studied in the entrepreneurship group in Ylöjärvi high school. In the group we had many different kind of projects, for example we started our own company and co-operated with other students from different countries. 

 
Besides teamwork and business, I’m also very interested in technology and especially new technologies, and that’s one reason why I’m very excited to be part of a Google Glass project. After this project I am looking for new opportunities related to business and technology.

 

 Hanna Remula

UI & UX Designer

 +358408312414, remula.hanna.k@student.uta.fi, LinkedIn 

Responsbilities in this project:

• Designing and evaluation of...
• user interface
• user experience
• user interaction
• End user interviews (focus point: usability issues)
• Photographing for this blog and presentations

To get a change to design a UI and UX for the new and innovative technology is very inspirational. Google Glass can offer a totally new kind of user experience, and that is also setting interesting challenges to me and the team for designing also. I study Interactive Technology at the University of Tampere, and my the master's degree program is in User Experience: Design and Evolution. My minors are marketing and social psychology, so in designing user experience, I also have a consumer experience perspective.

I have several years of experience in sales work, and now - since this year - as a customer coordination at the Yrityspäivät (the largest networking and recruiting event for academic students in Finland). So - working between human, technology and the business is a natural choice for me.

In a future I am looking forward to work with user interfaces, user experience and the consumer experience field.

Ali Waris

UI & UX Designer / Programming 
+358466312228, ali_waris89@yahoo.com, LinkedIn

Responsibilities

In the project I am responsible for the UI / UX of the application. My other is developing the front end on android platform.  Designing the interface which will put less cognitive load on the user head and eye, and make sure it should be not stressful when use for a long time. As UX designer is important to ensure that the product logically flows from one step to the next. Define interaction models, user task flows, and UI specifications. Communicate scenarios, end-to-end experiences, interaction models. Suggesting improvements in the interface from the feedback from the real user.

Background

I have 1.7 years of professional experience in working a software company. I worked on developing the Ios applications also on Enterprise solution PeopleSoft and customization of product in Silverlight and C#. Worked as a Teaching Assistant for ArcGIS lab.

Education

Master Degree Student in User Experience in TUT, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Interests

Design application, evaluating user experience, Mobile development, Business Intelligence

Philipp Weitz 

Main Developer / Programming 

LinkedIn

Responsbilities in this project:

• Main Developer / Programmer
• Interface Design

My motivation for this project is that it allows me to work with Google Glasses. This new and state of the art technology provides huge chances for the future and I want to experience it on my own. I want to examine the possibilities and limitations of this new device. My main goal for this project is to produce a product which will provide at least the requested functionality. It is important for me that all the different elements work together to form a product which fulfils the customers’ requirements as best as possible.

Google Glass Traffic Warden: Country-Specific Challenges

When you read our blog, you might feel that everything has been unrealistically perfect about this project. We are not denying the fact that we are a great team who likes to work with each other. We have a dedicated project partner-Vincit- and Demola has been extremely generous when helping us with our needs. All in all, we can say that we are absolutely on the right track! However, it has not been easy as you might have imagined.

It is easy to anticipate that smartphones are already reaching the decline stage in the technology lifecycle, thus a new technology is expected to emerge. Could Google Glass (or virtual glasses in general) be the successor? At least that is what we thought so. The smartphones had a predecessor, namely mobile phone, that is similar only not that smart. However, Glass is a completely new experience with its different look which some even describe as ''dorky''. Now, think about marketing this product to the 40+ years old traffic wardens which are members of one of the world's shyest and/or most introvert (take your pick) society. Sounds challenging, doesn’t it?  

Speaking of country specific challenges, I am sure most of you know how long winter is in Finland. For the ones who do not know, it is 6-7 months long! And  wait! It keeps getting better: The hours of sunshine that we receive here during the winter are approximately  30-40 hours per month. (refer here: YLE-It is official Helsinki was three times glomier, for a simpler explanation refer here: Meanwhile in Finland). Now, let’s re-think that idea: We want to develop an application for the Google Glass that uses the camera to recognize license plates. This might require a bit of  daylight, don't you think?

In the winter also gloves are always needed outside in Finland

Good news; we are lucky to have a team that like challenges. We MIGHT have already overcome the aforementioned challenges.  In order to figure that out you should wait a bit more and keep visiting our blog.  We'll keep you posted!