So I didn’t realize how big the Unbox team was until the next morning at Startup Weekend. When I got there the coders and dev folk were already well under way and there was a good 8 of them. Meanwhile the business folk like me were all about figuring out what the problem we were trying to solve was. So in total there was 13 or 14 of us working away.
We ended up circling the same dance several times which focused on why would anyone want to see their inbox as an infographic and what would make the comeback more than once. How could we make money on it and what to ask when we have to confirm the idea.
We also had to figure out what type of data we had from emails and gmail specifically which was the platform of choice by Alex. We wouldn’t have time to get too deep into the data but we could visualize the simple things like the number of unread emails, contacts, flagged messages, the “to” and the “from.” The real magic would be in the semantic analysis but there was no way we could do that in just 54 hours so we focused on the simple email data that we could visualize.
We took 2 tracks, a consumer version and a business one. We had some amazing designers, coders and one guy with extensive experience working with email systems that was vital to getting it all done on time so we could have a workable demo by Sunday. I and the some of the biz dev guys created a lean canvas to figure out what we had and what we didn’t.
We had to validate the idea not just with mentors and sponsors who were wandering about but through our network with larger companies who had complex email systems. You would be surprised at the issues people have with email as individuals and how that changes for each department and job.
I think that an automated analysis of their email systems could help corporations understand how people and departments really use email in a way that we can prove with data so they could be optimized effectively.
When you get email in large volumes the insight that we could get from it becomes much more valuable. We could see how the organization actually uses their email from a strategic sense all the way down to the person.
One user case for the business side could be figuring out how long does it take for a customer service ticket done through email take from being opened to closed and offer notifications to make sure that cases were closed promptly.
We still faced the same issue of why? The power in visualizing a company’s email data we could show them in a way that is easy to understand a real-time view of their email. This would make it easier to dig into and allow us to offer solutions to use it better.
We can’t lead you to the gates of heaven and not expect them to ask how do they walk through the doors. We have to give them something they can act on, in this case make it easier to manage their glut of email from an organizational perspective to the person.
On a person to person basis the system could be similar to the system we would use for the consumer with greater depth but on an organizational level we would probably need help to through email solutions providers.
Unbox targets the moderate to heave email users and one consumer case study we came up with was what if we could uncover all the newsletters you have not opened in the past year and if there was specific ones you never opened provided a way to easily remove them. I think that alone would be a valuable use of Unbox.
I wasn’t surprised to see how fast and far the devs were working to get things done, they were are so great. The entire thing felt like a race against time. There were post-it notes all over the room as lean canvases went up on the walls for each group.
Some groups brought entire iMacs for the weekend and it was a sprint from start to finish. So in the end the model that Alex decided on was that it would be free for consumers (with the potential for advertising to cover costs) and a tiered pricing models for business based on volume usage.
The visual look and feel was already coming together. We used rings to represent years when visualizing your email. As you went from the outside ring you would go back one year which you can see below, just like the rings you find in a tree log.
This is an early screen shot of what the unbox infographic would look like and while it would change a bit more before it we finished, this is pretty close to the consumer version’s final result.
By 10pm we started crafting parts of the pitch we would present on Sunday. The other Eric on our team and Sergei worked on the presentation but before we were through it would change completely half a dozen times.
By 11pm we started sending out PR to all the tech blogs and outlets we could think about to help build the buzz for tomorrow and that would continue to the end. The PR guys setup the unboxapp twitter account and other social media sites to get our communications rolling so we could build some tech blog buzz before the pitch.
I didn’t get home until past 2 in the morning and would be back bright and early around 10am on Sunday for one more day of crazy. In something like this it is a sprint and the dev team were the stars. Fernando was sick and without his skills in working with email API’s we probably would not have been able to have a workable demo ready for show.
Alex the idea man is a great designer and he worked on the visual design of the site and inforgraphics with the coders and devs making sure that the tires didn’t fall off the entire thing mid-way. By this time we all could see the value of what Unbox after all we had been through the issues and challenges that could arise so that when 11pm came and went we just pushed harder to rock it.
Funny, the real work begin on Saturday but time seemed to move at light speed and it would get faster still as Sunday morning approached and the pitch loomed larger in the Unbox window.