Connected Devices/Projects/Project Magnet
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| Project Magnet |
|---|
 |
| Author(s) |
| Mozilla |
| Released |
| 2016.02.17 (Initial Pitch) |
| 2016.03.16 (Pitch Update) |
| Innovation Status |
| Stage 1 (Validation) |
| Website |
| https://mzl.la/magnet |
Project Magnet is your own, personal user agent for the content that is around you. Instead of getting a list of URLs and you having to browse each link to understand how you can interact with the content, Project Magnet will enable you to have an interactive and friction less experience. The experience will always be fully customizable by you, so you can use it for your maximum enjoyment.
We've just kicked off this project, so stay tuned for details on our next steps, but if you would like to get involved as a tester, developer or adviser, you can get in touch with our connected devices participation team.
Contents
Project overview
The Internet is a vast communication infrastructure capable of many different things. The World Wide Web is simply the way we interact within the Internet. The world wide web is what made the internet useful to everybody, rather than just a select few.
The Physical Web has the ability to get rid of all the IOT apps altogether by presenting a much simpler way to interact with our devices. And in fact, it is the exact same thing that the World Wide Web used to harness the internet.
BLE Beacons are one of the vast list of technologies that are cropping up everywhere to support the creation of the physical web, with particularly strong growth coming in Enterprise / Industrial, IoT and connected home, as well as more established markets like retail and personal asset tracking. The arrival of Eddystone is a huge driver here, particularly in non-retail markets, where new signals and features are particularly beneficial.
The aim of Magnet is to create a "browser" for the physical web. Magnet will surface contextually relevant content and actions on the user's favourite smartphone; all of this within the context of the Firefox Browser.
Project vision
"Project Magnet democratizes storytelling so people never miss the nearby stories that matter to them"
Problem statement
- User: It’s too easy for curious and inquisitive people to miss the fascinating stories around them.
- Storyteller: It’s too difficult and costly for storytellers to deploy content to physical locations.
Finding a solution for this problem will help us to answer questions as...
- How can I be notified when I’m near art by my favorite artist?
- What was life like on this street 100 years ago?
- What movie was filmed in this location?
- Who created this street art and why?
- Where can I learn more about this plant?
- Can I drink water from this fountain?
- Where can I buy this musician’s music?
- Can I still tip this street performer if I don’t have any cash?
- How does she make these beautiful cakes?
- Is it safe walking around this neighborhood at night?
Product Overview
- Mobile Client: Connects people with publishers via nearby experiences.
- Service & Tools: Enables publishers to deploy content into physical spaces, manage beacons, deployment health, and analyze impact.
- Hardware: Off the shelf Physical Web beacons, preconfigured to our service for frictionless setup.
Project status
After London experiments and the findings we got there, we decided that we need to try to upload our application to the stores to remove the installation barriers. At the end of August "Project Magnet" application was uploaded to the Apple Store and Google Play.
We also attended to the View Source conference in Berlin at mid September to run some experiments there, broadcasting schedule content so spur-of-the-moment attendees could quickly and confidently choose how to spend their time. We also give away beacons to the attendees and help them to configure them to try to measure them if that increased the number of interactions that they had during the conference and other possible uses. For more info, check User Insights from View Source
Now Project Magnet has a clearer user-value-proposition: 'Never miss the stories that matter to you'. From View Source we identified some key pain points and a second user: content providers or "publishers" that miss tools that enable them to deploy content to physical spaces. We're addressing the Physical Web content-gap problem by introducing additional content channels (GPS assisted) and an opt-in UX model will give users full control over the content they see (ad/spam/malicious content protection).
We presented the new pitch 0 to the Product Innovation Board on Oct 12th and passed Gate 0 again so from now to end of the year we are working on pilot to help us to validate that the Magnet experience attracts users to try the app and return frequently.
Program Status
| Milestone | Date | Status | Status Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Formal Kick off meeting | 04/13/2016 | Done | Magnet Kick off |
| London All Hands Experiments | 06/13/2016 | Done | |
| MVP review meeting in London | 06/16/2016 | Done | MVP review in London |
| Working week in MTV to define the Product Plan from Oct 3rd to 6th | 10/7/2016 | Done | Meeting notes during the MTV working week |
| Meeting with PIB to pass Gate 0 again | 10/12/2016 | Done | Passed Gate 0!! |
| Client Release with GPS functionality | 10/24/2016 | Done | |
| Mozfest | 10/28/2016 | Done | |
| MVP Client ready to be uploaded to the stores | 11/23/2016 | Done | We delayed the uploading until Nov 24th because some issues were detected during the Test Run |
| User Study to validate the future experience/UX | 11/30/2016 | Done | It starts on Nov 30th and finishes on Dec 2nd |
| FB landing page experiments to validate Product Market fit | 11/30/2016 | Done | |
| London Pilot | 11/30/2016 | Cancelled | We would not able to offer an enough compelling experience and attractive MVP client so we decided that it would be better to wait and run a user validation test with some users using a mock up. That would give us better incomes. |
| Hawaii working week | 12/21/2016 | Done | |
| Gate 1 meeting with PIB | 01/13/2017 | Done | Gate 1 passed |
| UX Wireframes for Beta version of the application | 01/27/2017 | On target | First version of the Wireframes will be delivered on the Jan 20th and the following week will be refine them before the Visual work starts |
| Visual Design of the app finished | 03/03/2017 | Delayed | It should start on Jan 30th. We are still waiting for Visual Design resources so the mot probable start state would be on Feb 20th (4 Weeks delay) |
| Usability Test | 02/20/2017 | On target | |
| Street Art content included in the Metadata Server | 03/31/2017 | Delayed | We are still waiting for Content Curator resources (4 Weeks delay) |
| Beta version of the application (based on the Street Art use case) ready in the stores | 03/31/2017 | Delayed | |
| Marketing campaign launched | during April 2017 | Delayed |
Status Key
| Color | Status | Key |
|---|---|---|
| On Target | The project or deliverable is expected to meet its due date. | |
| Challenged | The project or deliverable is facing an issue that might cause it to miss its due date, but a “get well” plan has been developed to get it back on track. | |
| At Risk or Late | The project or deliverable is blocked or facing an issue that might cause it to miss its due date, and there’s no “get well” plan to get it back on track, or it is already late. | |
| Done | The project or deliverable has been completed. | |
| On Hold or Not Started | The project or deliverable has either not been started or has been placed on hold. |
Archived Completed Deliverables
| Deliverable | Date | Status | Status Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magnet Assumptions/Hypotheses | 5/03/2016 | Done | They will be reviewed by the team on 5/04/2016 during our Weekly meeting |
| Project Magnet: User Research #1 Findings | 6/01/2016 | Done | Hypothesis we started out was not validated but other interesting questions raised from the User Study |
| Research Plan to be run in London All Hands | 6/10/2016 | Done | The plan was setting up three experiments (Sched, Reduce Anxiety and Personal hook). It consists on sending out communications to CD advertising the experiments, collect people’s contact info to send a survey and interview them after the All Hands week. |
| Project Magnet: User Research #2 Themes and Findings | 7/13/2016 | Done | |
| Project Magnet: User Research #3 (View Source) Themes and Findings | 9/23/2016 | Done | |
| Magnet MVP User Stories and Backlog pre-Gate0 | Done | ||
| Project Magnet Problem Solution Fit tests in FB | 11/16/2016 | Done | The the problem of people wanting to rediscover their city or discover hidden secrets exists, but we did not achieve high levels of conversion (registrations or downloads) from the landing page. This could either be poor execution on the Landing Page with messages that don't connect to end users, or just lack of interest in getting an app for this problem but not qualitative data around |
| Project Magnet Technical Analysis | 01/12/2017 | Done |
Program Timeline
Planned Timeline for the Pilot (Post-Gate1)
Magnet application release at the end of Q1 has been delayed since we are waiting for key resources as the Visual Design and the Content Curator. The overall project timeline has been adjusted accordingly and at this point, we're running about 4 weeks behind the original schedule.
Project Management
We use Waffle board for tracking github issues. All ongoing tasks are listed there.
Sprint Backlog
- Initial Phase
- Pre-Gate 1: After passing Gate 0 again on Oct 12th, these are the development sprints we split the work to launch the London pilot (pre - Gate 1):
- Post Gate-1: After passing Gate 1 on Jan 13th 2017, this is the Sprint Plan we want to tackle. For this phase we would use another client called "journey"
Development process
Repositories
- Magnet Code Repository: https://github.com/mozilla-magnet
- Magnet Documentation Repository: Magnet Google Drive
IRC
- You can find us on irc.mozilla.org, channel #magnet.
Methodology
We use some agile practices as sprint plannings, weekly meetings, standups in our Magnet vidyo room (External link)
- Weekly meetings in Magnet Vidyo room on Wednesday at 8:30 AM (Pacific Time). Minutes are gathered in this Google doc
- Development Sprint Planning meetings (biweekly) in our Magnet Vidyo room at 11:00 AM (UK Time)
- Sync meetings are scheduled at different time each day of the week, ping us on irc if you want to join and we will send you an invite.
Sprint Demos/Progress Report meetings
| Date | Presentation | Vidyo Recording | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6/02/2016 | checking #1 Slides | checking #1 Video Recording | Feedback already added in the Slides |
| 6/16/2016 | MVP review in London | Not available | Feedback included here |
| 7/15/2016 | checking #2 Slides | checking #2 Video Recording | Feedback already added in the Slides |
| 10/12/2016 | Gate 0 pitch after pivoting | Gate 0 pitch Video Recording | Gate 0 approved with caveat to nail down the use cases / segments in one week |
| 11/10/2016 | Offline Update Nov 10th | - | |
| 11/29/2016 | Checkin Nov 29th | Checkin Nov 29th Video Recording | Feedback already added in the Checkin Slides |
| 12/21/2016 | Checkin Dec 21st | Checkin Dec 21st Video Recording | Feedback already added in the Checkin Slides |
| 01/13/2017 | Gate 1 Deck and Product Visuals | Video Recording | |
| 01/27/2017 | Meeting notes | Video Recording | Included in the meeting notes |
QA/Testing
- User Stories and Acceptance Criteria for each of the features defined can be found here
- Test cases related to the sched integration here
- Test cases defined for the UI App (WIP) here
- Faking location in Android and iOS to discover Virtual/GPS locations
- Content Discovery Checking for GPS/Virtual Beacons
Participation
Getting in touch
- The best way to get in touch with us is to come and chat in our irc channel channel #magnet of irc.mozilla.org and through Discourse where Participation has created a specific discussion forum for Magnet together with the rest of Connected Devices Trains.
References
- Innovation Board pitch deck (2016.03.16)
- Magnet wiki in Github
Team
- Wilson Page - Product lead / SW Engineer
- Francisco Jordano - Engineering Manager
- Francis Djabri - UX lead
- Elizabeth Hunt - UX
- Sam Giles - SW Engineer
- Guillaume Marty - SW Engineer
- Isabel Rios - SW Engineer/QA
- Mihaela Zahariev - Researcher
- Maria Oteo - EPM
