These projects are all categorized as design exercises or attempts that never got to market, or were meant to be released.
Consophia
Consophia was my first true idea of passion. My experience in the current education system was less than positive and it lead me to aspire to better learning experiences for all.
Consophia drew from the original vision of the decentralized web combined with modern Learning Management Systems.
The simple vision of Consophia was to first build a relational understanding of facts and processes and to allow them to be simply turned into self-cited guides, resources, and ultimately courses.
This vision would allow educators to add notable value to their courses by allowing users visibility into the fundamental building blocks behind any fact or process.
Example: Explaining basic mitosis to an early-stage learner is hard, but being able to provide that learner with their own network of data allows them to explore basic chemistry and physics of mitosis at a top-down approach so they can go as deep, or stay as high-level as they want, without requiring an educator to design and provide all of these resources.
This project was split into: Learner experience & Data structure
Learner experience was focused on striking a balance between breadth vs depth of resources and course content creation to make it simple to build yet infinitely powerful when applied without requiring educator or learner to be responsible for doing it themselves.
Data structure was focused on how to build a network of data that self-references (similar to Ted Nelson’s original vision of Xanadu for the world wide wed – Ted Nelson had feedback on this original idea which a personal accomplishment I am proud of).
Consophia was deemed “too much” to take on during university but stemmed HanDIY and ultimately PROject as offshoot ideas.
Someday success with PROject and/or HanDIY could allow opportunity to revive this idea.
EveryWatch
EveryWatch was simply a response to the fast pace of the wearable technology and smart device market growth.
Problem: devices are evolving too fast for any current device to last more than 1-2 years resulting in wasted resources and budget.
Solution: Design a modular smartwatch that can be upgraded over time based on the user’s preferences and needs.
Example: A user buys a BAND + FACE + MOTHERBOARD
PIVOT: Instead of a modular watch…. WHAT IF you could add smart capabilities to ANY watch?
PIVOT explained: Design an smartwatch “attachment” that could clip onto 80% of modern/past analog watches, removing the need for users to fully replace something such as a timeless rolex, or family heirloom with a smartwatch, instead they can upgrade it and not miss out on any smart features. This also reduces the materials used so when new technology evolves, upgrading would be less impactful on the environment and the user’s budget while keeping them “with the times”.
EveryWatch was simply a university product design experiment and was never intended to be built or released.
Designhelp.live
Designhelp.live was a design experiment resulting from HanDIY that was not intended to launch, but did for a short time, resulting in 50+ users.
Designhelp.live was the outcome of needing to create a cheaper, and more simplified MVP of HanDIY.
Designhelp.live was 2 things: a product design community + a product design virtual mentorship platform.
Designhelp.live simply offered the ability to post a job contract, and for designers to accept them in return for per-minute payment, once accepted the users would be connected via live remote video so they could collaborate and design together.
Designhelp.live went live with a pilot resulting in 100+ signed up users and 50+ active users.
Learn more about HanDIY: The first iteration to learn more!
Touge Share
Touge Share was a personal project of passion built for myself to help find, store, and access awesome driving roads/routes more easily.
Touge Share simply allowed users to create and post their own driving routes, and for users to access and navigate directly to – and through these routes with minimal clicks.
Touge Share was designed to help people find new roads, inspire a passion for driving, and contribute to “touge” and “jdm” culture.
Touge Share was taken from an idea, to a clickable prototype, to an MVP launched in my personal networks.
The combination of limited usage, high need for marketing, and personal aspirations to focus on learning and succeeding as a product manager at Shinydocs lead me to wind down this MVP and not spend any more time on it.
If you like this idea, check out Sunday Drive instead! (I shared my learnings and designs with the founder in hopes they make it reality) (update: Sunday Drive is LIVE and growing, check it out NOW!)
VoteChain
The modern world is crazy, most people seem to agree… or be yelling this from the rooftops lately.
I spend a lot of time with modern philosophy and this lead me to conducting a fundamentals analysis on why people feel so left-out, disconnected, lost and out of control in the 2020s.
I conducted both market research, and user polling to gain a better understanding of this problem.
The results may surprise you:
- A majority of Canadians do not feel their interests are represented by the government and their policies
- A majority of Canadians see politics and government failures as the top source of disconnect in the modern world
- A notable portion of Canadians see big tech and specifically social media as the second source of this disconnect
- More Canadians choose to not vote year over year
- eVoting technologies are not perceived as a solution to democratic failure but are often referenced
- Most north american people believe that the solution lays in
- Better transparency of data
- Better transparency of policy success
- Better candidates to choose from
- More opportunities to vote
- More opportunities to vote on more granular policies
- More customized policies for smaller groups/municipalities
This lead me to ideate and prototype a potential product to solve this need.
VoteChain went though many iterations to become:
- A polling app first and foremost
- Politicians need more data from more data points/people
- Build confidence and MVP in polling – less risk, less liability, less pressure
- Combining facts/data/sources with polling decisions
- Learn BEFORE you vote as a core principal
- Politicians submit their facts/data/sources + VoteChain adds “agnostic” alternatives
- Using blockchain to store votes, policies, and policy success metric statistics
- Accountability and democracy to the core – log all data
- Log this data using blockchain to instill full confidence in accuracy and integrity of data
- A business roadmap to first build confidence and data with polling and eventually offer fully secure government endorsed voting tools and user experience
- No matter what polling is the first step to policy formulation and eventually voting
- Once success and security are proven in polling – build MVP to focus on allowing more polling and voting in the public domain whereas the polling tool may be used both in government and corporate settings
VoteChain is still an idea I believe in but chose to focus on PROject as it has more immediate marketability and could eventually lead to building my own brand to the point I could get the right set of early adopter clients interested to pilot this technology.
And MANY more
I still log all of my ideas in my notebooks, from tiny, to huge. From consumer, to B2B. From software to hardware to services.
I love products and will not stop ideating, playing, and building until I change the world (more than I already have)
Jesse Dennis Sheather 