Steps

The Five Step Process

Every Bootstrapping project follows the same five step process of development. These steps build up a project from scratch and can be repeated if necessary.

Design - Who Are You Serving?

With your team, create your end-user persona and user journey centered on empathy (we need to care about your persona) to build team vision and later attract mentors and investors. To do this, create a draft storyboard of your end user persona’s pain or struggle that your solution will address - tell their story!

Next, create a draft Mission Grid (Pain, Solution, Value, Competition).

Next, create a draft group members personal profile brand cards - include general statements about team members like hobbies and interests, but make sure to omit all identifiable student data, especially family names and birth dates.

Lastly, finalize all team member roles - these can include project manager, data management lead, UX designer, UI designer, and marketing manager, among other possible roles.

Invest and Mentorship

Investment doesn’t always come in the form of $$$ - in our case, it comes in the form of mentoring from our critical friends. Ask family and friends in order to get feedback on the draft user persona and journey. As a team, consider adding feedback to the storyboard.

Next, finalize Mission Grid (Pain, Solution, Value, Competition). Think about potential investor care-abouts - a value proposition that scratches an ‘itch’, or a disruptive solution. A solid and caring team is extremely important for project success and to convince investors and mentors to support you.

Tell potential mentors and/or investors ‘exclusive info’, and use data to back this up. Ask questions about the world. Give real life experiences that your product or idea would help with. Stress the pain point that your product resolves for your user persona - tell their story.

Build

You can build and then A/B test lots of things such as logos, website or app designs, or even analog products like a new cell phone case or even food! Sometimes we like to A/B test UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) for websites or apps (try paper prototyping!).

Your team will launch both A/B designs at the same time on your LMS - we use Google Forms and Classroom to post A/B prototypes on the stream - let the ‘crowd’ (your classmates) decide which one they want. The more a student answers forms from teams, the higher their reputation gets!

Launch

Finalize UX/UI A/B prototypes with the team and launch both A/B designs at the same time on your LMS. Use GC stream (or similar) and GForms (or similar) as usual to launch UX/UI prototypes and get that data!

Analyse & Final Presentation

Analyse (interpret) A/B data from GForms (or similar) as a team and decide which to keep and which to drop - A or B. The prototype that your crowd chooses gets put into your Final Presentation.

For the Final Presentation, finalize group member personal profile brand cards - omit identifiable student data like age or family name etc. Finalize storyboard. Your team’s final presentation should include the user journey with the final storyboard, finalized UX/UI of the websites or apps (or other), and all team member profile brand cards.

Repeat (Only If You Want To!)

Repeat another iteration with the same team if you had a great time, worked well together, or think your project has potential. You can start something new or take the A or B prototype that the team chose from the last round, and split it, again, into another A/B that you will launch again, and so it goes...

If you decide not to work with the same team members, well here is the good news - you have completed a full cycle, and maybe it was tough, but congratulations, you did it! You might want to try a new project with a new team, you might want to be project manager next time around, or maybe you don’t want to be project manager again - and that’s ok too!

Testimonials

What people think about us

At Reimagine Education, we’re keen to reward pedagogical initiatives that are equipping students with the skills necessary to succeed in the 21st-century economy, valuing as we do the positive formative effects that education should have on employability. In ensuring that students learn – from a young age, and in an engaging, carefully-conceived way – the modes of thinking and hard skills necessary to foster entrepreneurial success, The Bootstrapping Checklist deserves this global recognition. In particular, our Judging Panel commend it for its integration with GitHub, which is a shining example of the project’s efforts to integrate classroom learning with contemporary innovation tools; and its focus on learning as a social, collaborative experience.

Reimagine Steering Committee

The Bootstrapping Checklist taught me how to collaborate with others virtually. My experiences have definitely taught me a lot.

Harini A.

Former Bootstrapper

The Bootstrapping Checklist was definitely an enjoyable process. I have never done anything like this before. I always thought that this sort of process was for people who wanted to be entrepreneurs, but through the bootstrapping checklist I learned it can be for anyone. This is a memorable experience that I will never forget. It was awesome! :)

Sakthi K.

Former Bootstrapper

The Bootstrapping Checklist is the best project for practising leadership and innovation, because when everyone is thinking, everyone has fun.

Allen H.

Former Bootstrapper

FAQ

Answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

You can start with an idea. When you spot a problem in your day-to-day life, write it down. Then brainstorm possible solutions. Next you can pitch your idea of a solution to this problem to people. The people you pitch to can be your friends, colleagues or anyone really. After hearing your pitch people might want to join you in your journey of expanding your idea. Now you and your team will go through the stages of the bootstrapping checklist. Have fun!

A project can take one week or half a year. It really depends on what you want to do. You get to decide how much time to spend on your project. You could do an hour everyday or you could do two. When working on your project you can either rapid prototype or just prototype each thing slowly. It's your choice. But one thing is for sure, your project will last forever. You can always go back and edit or improve it for your users.

There is no actual number of people that you need to start. You can start with a partner or with 6 people. In your groups you might want to assign roles so that it won't be confusing. Some of the roles are founder, co-founder, designer and data manager.

When you start or join one project, you are fully committed to that project. You belong to that project and your mind is fully focused on the project. Throughout the whole 5 step process you belong to your team and you have to work through everything with them. Please do not leave half way through the process and join another group.