SONOS CHALLENGE - Boston - 9/23/19

BACKGROUND

The Sonos Challenge helps to amplify your skills in support of your future career, develop a real-world portfolio project, and win prizes and experiences! Smart speakers are transforming how we enjoy music, access information, and interact with our homes. What do you see as the future?

Students work in interdisciplinary teams to gain real-world experience and explore how companies actually develop products. Teams will be formed at the kick-off event.

your CHALLENGE: How do we design or build an experience that transitions people between spaces?

Submit a 5-minute video submission that showcases your prototype for a smart speaker experience that transitions people between spaces. Students may work in teams (up to 5 people max) to ideate, design, mockup, and prototype on any platform - mobile, cloud, embedded, or directly on Sonos hardware! All students have access to the Sonos Developer platform. Please join your peers and our team on this Slack Channel.

Calendar:

• Kick-off event: Monday, September 23rd, 2019, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET

• Online challenge opens and submissions begin: Monday, September 23rd, 2019, 9:00 PM ET

• Online challenge concludes: Monday, October 7, 2019, 11:59 PM ET

Office Hours:

• Wednesday – October 2nd

  • Access Sonos' development lab to test your integration and get hands-on support.

  • 4:00-7:00pm ET @ Sonos

• Monday – October 7th

  • 3:00-4:00pm ET online

  • Connect here: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/6871957200

Prizes:

• Each member of the winning team (up to 5 people) will win a BRAND NEW Sonos move ($399), for a total of up to $2,000 in prizes. Select winning teams will have an opportunity to showcase their submissions to Sonos leadership!

Challenge Rules:

• Your design must leverage at least 1 amazing sounding speaker in a home.

• Sound playback may focus on a standalone speaker(s), earbuds, or headphones. (Not a phone’s built-in speaker!)

• Students are strongly encouraged to work in interdisciplinary teams, but individual entries are allowed.

• Participants must be enrolled undergraduate or graduate students at a university.

Sonos Developer API Portal:

• Create an account to get API keys to use for your integration: https://developer.sonos.com/news/create-client-credentials/.

Sonos Challenge Support:

• Sonos mentors will be available for your comments and questions on Stack Overflow.
  Just tag "Sonos" on your questions and they will reply. (To see other Q&As, see here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sonos)
  For any questions on your team or the Sonos Challenge logistics email julia@realindustry.org

Submissions:
The submission process has 2 steps:

1. Complete the submission form. This form collects your team member names and a link to your final video. Please, please verify that your video URL is publicly viewable. If we can’t access your video, we can’t review.

2. If you shared an online link to your YouTube, Vimeo, or Google Drive video in the above step, you are done!
   If needed, you can also upload your final video file to us via this Dropbox link.

Requirements:
Students must BUILD and DEMONSTRATE a prototype using a speaker or smart speaker platform.

• Demonstrations should be a 5-minute (max) video presentation.

  Demonstration videos should include all of the following:

  • Explain and introduce your target user

  • Explain your value proposition. (Who cares? What problem are your solving, or what opportunity are you creating?)

  • Explain your smart speaker experience

  • Explain and showcase what you built - your prototype MUST work - and not be only a wireframe or “smoke and mirrors” demo

  • Explain the technology used to implement the design

  • Optional: Explain any design considerations, validation, or testing you did on this user group

  • Include all team members names, majors, and email addresses

  
  Spend 20% of your presentation introducing the user and problem you are solving, 60% of your presentation describing what you built and how it works, and 20% in other areas.

  Judging Criteria:

  • Innovation and inventiveness: How well does this new design “push the envelope” and enhance user experience?

  • Technical skills: How well does the team demonstrate technical skills and engineering best practices?

  • Suitability to purpose: How well does the design prove useful and suited to serving its purpose, providing a positive user experience?

    • Creativity: How well does the entry reflect cleverness and originality of thought to support the challenge and add value?

Resources
IFTTT Integration (a super simple no-coding required way to get up and running): https://ifttt.com/sonos
Sonos API: https://developer.sonos.com
Introducing the Sonos Sound Platform: https://developer.sonos.com/news/introducing-the-sonos-sound-platform/
Connected Home: Get Started: https://developer.sonos.com/build/connected-home-get-started/
Sound Experience Guidelines: https://developer.sonos.com/build/seg/