Week 44
The next iteration
For the next iteration of our prototype, we are aiming to complete a main menu which allows selecting scenes and the first scene to be fully testable. We will then collect feedback on this through some demo sessions, focusing especially on the usability of the user interface. Based on these, we will improve on the user interface and implement one or two more scenes for the final version of the prototype.
Business model canvas
The business model canvas for our product is shown below.
Relevant numbers
Based on these two sites, in 2016 there were about 6 million units of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR headsets sold, which are the platforms we’re targeting. Factoring in that not everyone is interested in our program, we thus estimate that for private sales we have a market of around 10 000 - 100 000 customers. However, this number is increasing all the time as the popularity of VR headsets increases and their price drops, and the number of sold devices has likely doubled during 2017.
As an initial market for educational institutions, we target Finnish upper secondary schools. Currently, there are 342 upper secondary schools in Finland. It is hard to estimate how many of them have VR hardware. The Finnish National Agency for Education launched a pilot program for VR in education with three schools, but we believe that other schools have purchased VR hardware as well. We estimate that in total, there are around 10-20 upper secondary schools in Finland.
After some piloting in Finland, we would launch in the US, which is the largest market for VR headsets. Here again it’s difficult to estimate the number of schools with VR hardware. According to the Steam hardware survey, about 0.24 % of (private) users own either the Vive or the Rift headset. Assuming a similar percentage of adaptation as for privately owned headsets, the 30 000 secondary schools in the US would put us at some hundreds of schools.
To sell the game on the Steam platform, a fee of $100 USD has to be paid. There are many VR headsets available at Aalto, but in the long run we would probably need our own computer and VR headset for development and demo purposes. A VR capable computer and a headset together can be bought for 2000€.
To market our product to private customers, we could utilize advertising on social media and on e.g. the Steam platform, which requires some financing. We also need to pay for our developers and content creators. Initially we would probably hire people to work part time.
All in all, we would be pretty well set with an initial capital of around 10 000€.
Progress of the prototype
We have continued working on the prototype this week. We clarified our goals and specifically assigned some development tasks to group members. This had concrete results; the technical side of the first scene where a player is inside a pipe with a grid pattern is almost complete and the educational content / explanation is also well underway. Below is a GIF of the pipe scene showing how distance warps when near the speed of light, although it doesn't really capture what this scene feels like in VR.
Additionally, we had technical issues with glitchy graphics earlier, which we managed to fix. We also discussed the other scenarios in our meetings and we started work on the educational content for those as well. We also worked on the user interface, clearing up the information shown to the user and creating a simple main menu.