Final Project #2: Idea and team

In the second part of this blog series, I'd like to revisit the discussion we had in the case study: "Idea first or team first?". I'm gonna share what my team has gone through and my thoughts on the topic based on my  experience.

Our project idea started from our HTML5 assignment - Carpool. After Carpool, Deepan, Jason and I realized that it made more sense having a taxi sharing app rather than a carpooling app, simply because taxi sharing could give users greater financial benefits that could motivate them to use the app. We pitched the idea to the class during the Pitching Party and got our 4th member, Joey. At that time we were all very excited. The idea was really promising and interesting to us.

But then turned out we were wrong. After spending a whole week discussing and consulting Prof Ben, Kok Wee, and some other people, we found out that it was not worth it to implement the idea due to these reasons:
- Taxi fare in Singapore is not that expensive. The maximum amount one has to pay for a ride may be up to $30 only, much more tolerable than, say, in NYC or other big cities.
- Singaporeans don't like sharing stuff, especially with strangers. The culture here is not really suitable for a taxi sharing app to succeed. Most of the people we talked to said they'd prefer taking a cab alone rather than asking strangers to share the ride. And since the taxi fare is not that high, sharing to them is not necessary.
- The possibility to get a match is very low. The prerequisite for our app to work is a large user base, but even if we could get like 10,000 users, the chance for some of them to be at the same place, at the same time and going to the same direction is extremely low. And if they can't find a match after a few times trying the app, they'll possibly never use it again.

So that idea was pretty much over for us. After 2 weeks we went back to where we started. It was too late for us to switch idea entirely, and also we couldn't come up with anything else. So we decided to stick to the idea of a taxi app, but this time focus more on the features that users would actually use: 1-click cab booking, fare calculator, and taxi stand finder. We wanted to build something simple and yet could benefit many people. We focused on making a nice, easy-to-use UI to provide users with the best UX possible. After 4 weeks, Cab.SG was born, available on both web, Android, and iPhone. At this moment we already have 100+ downloads (and counting) on Android app store after 1 week.

So what's the morale of this story? How is this related to the discussion topic I mentioned earlier? It turns out that in a project with a very tight deadline, idea does matter a lot. It is much easier and less painful if the team can get the idea right at the first place. When the idea is right, the team can focus all their energy on implementing the idea and make the best out of that short period of time. But it's normally not the case for most teams including us. It's very hard to get everything right at the very beginning. We have to try out things first in order to know if they're good or not. And that costs time. What if we try and fail? We will have to do everything all over again. And the only thing that can salvage the project at this point is the ability of a good team. I have a belief that good teams can always finish strong regardless of the difficulties and obstacles that get into their ways. In our case, even though we faced a lot of hard time, we still manged to work it out as long as we worked together.

So to sum up, in my own opinion, idea matters, but good team is the most important element of a successful project. A good team can always figure out a good idea and implement it nicely.

...And I'm moving closer to the final blog...