During the Summer of 2015, I attended the European Innovation Academy in Nice, France among other students from Universities all over the world (Berkeley, Carnegie Melon, Stanford etc.). During the three weeks, we worked in international teams on a startup with the aim of presenting a product and pitching it in front of a range of investors from Silicon Valley. Throughout the three weeks, our teams were mentored by succesful entrepreneurs, interaction designers, user experience designers, marketing wizards and leaders within their respective fields.

Our team consisted on members from Denmark, Austria and the U.S., which excelled throughout the three weeks. We ranked top and received a couple of honorable mentions and achievements (Best Product, Finalist) for our product.

Our product was a collaborative tool for for sharing of information between full-time nannies and family. It can be described as a type of instagram for parents, where their childs’ most memorable moments are captured and they won’t miss them again. Hence, a tool for career-minded parents and nannies that want to give an extra service.

Our product consisted of a fully responsive platform, based on Angularjs, Parse (RIP) and Bootstrap. It was built as a secure platform with logins for nanny, parents and secondary family members. The platform had three main functionalities, the biggest was the stream – letting the parents see Today’s memorable moments of going to the park, getting an icecream and making new friends. Secondary features include a collaborative schedule that allowed playdates and important information to be saved for communication between parent and caregiver. The features also included a emergency information profile, letting the nanny know of all allergies, sicknesses’ and so forth that the child might have – including directions to the Family’s doctor.

The great team that I spent three weeks in Nice, France with, from left to right: Clemens, Michael, myself, Megan and Elizabeth. Throughout the three weeks, we worked very dynamically with shifting roles, but the development team consisted of me, Clemens and Michael, where my responsibility was the interface design and front-end with some backend responsibilities working together with Clemens – Michael was in charge of user experience/user evaluation. Megan and Elizabeth worked on the business and marketing side of our product, keeping us visible to investors and provided the rest of us with a peace of mind and mentoring when needed.