Practice pitches. First round

Today, the last three teams have showed their projects to the rest of the class.  We presented our project the past week, because the fact of being volunteer for the first round of pitches seemed as a "professionalism" point. However, from my point of view, it is a significant advantage for the rest of the teams, because they saw other pitches before they prepare one. So, they realized the most common mistakes, the strongest points, the professor remarks, etc., and they could take into account  all of them when you face your own practice pitch.

Anyway, these are my reactions to the three projects presented today:

- AUTOMATON

• 3 speakers in total. I think they should cut it to 1 or 2.
• The handout was OK. Colorful and just a couple of words.
• Good description and goals.
• The demo was good in general (maybe slightly long).
• It seems like people did not understand how the game exactly worked.
• They should  probably add a detailed legend, and accurate explanations about the rules (tooltips).
• Nice design, especially dialog windows when success, stats and game selection (UX).
• They may consider hiding advanced options in the earliest levels.
• They did not stop the demo while they were answering questions. This may distract the audience's attention.
• Game already available on the Internet (good point!)

- VISUALSCHEDULER

• Good intro and problem definition
• They are focusing on the UNM current schedule system, but this system may be exported to other universities.
• The demo was OK, but they didn't handle the time properly because they finished their pitch 3 minutes before the minimum time (7 minutes). This produced an awkward silence...They finally improvised an example, but it looked like something unprofessional.
• The application seemed very useful for students. Some classmates suggested splitting the calendar and the search parts in a different way in order to be more clear for the user (now, they are using tabs).
• Too much text in the handout
• User accounts (save and edit schedules), to be implemented. They should try to do it as soon as possible because it is an important feature.
• It is going to be free, with premium accounts ($3/semester) that allow user to use some options like waitlists, etc.
• A classmate proposed the possibility of having records of previous semesters (like a user history). It sounds good in my opinion.

- GLOBAL EMISSIONS REDUCTION ALLIANCE (G.E.R.A.)

• Handout: too dark background color.
• They justified the creation of this app by using the Goldilocks Method. Initially, they set the problem, and then they said that nowadays there exists basically two kinds of applications related to global emissions: games and user-data based. G.E.R.A. is combines these two worlds in just one app.
• Goals well defined. They want to encourage users to help the environment in some way by taking part in different missions.
• The demo itself was good, but they made a relevant mistake when they chose the background for the website (too dark in my opinion, mostly because they chose a slightly "apocalyptic" picture as background). 
• The rest of the color pattern for the website did not help to improve the contrast. This fact was noticed by several classmates.
• They are planning to implement a Facebook sharing feature in the future (I believe they should include it in the first release if they have time enough).
• A classmate suggested not to use too many notes (small cards in this case) in the pitch.