Bar code sales tool is failing campus test

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RE: Bar code sales tool is failing campus test

I am one of the Master of Engineering and Management students at Case Western Reserve University who, along with 11 of my classmates, have been working diligently on managing the campus trial Mobile Discovery has been holding on campus throughout the entire 2007-2008 school year. I am outraged at the title of the article, which declares to all readers of the newspaper that this trial has been a failure. First of all, the trial has not even concluded, so calling it a failure is absolutely ludicrous. When the Kansas Jay Hawks were down 9 points with 2 minutes left in the NCAA Men?s National Championship game last night, Sports Illustrated did not begin printing advance issues with headlines declaring the Kansas team as losers. Why? Because the game was not over! In fact, they came back to win the game in a triumphant fashion and are now national champions. If a writer for that magazine would have printed such an article, with a premature headline, she would undoubtedly be relieved of her position because the headline would have clearly been misleading. This is precisely what the newspaper has done.
Second of all, two of the sources, who clearly have negatively biased opinions about the trial, have limited knowledge about the technology and campus acceptance in general. For some reason, however, their opinions seem to matter much more to the writer than the 12 students have put their blood, sweat, and tears into making this trial a success. In fact, if you ask our professors and industry leaders, this trial is already a success. We have captured valuable customer feedback from surveys and feedback from multiple use cases, which Mobile Discovery will undoubtedly be able to use in developing and fine tuning their product in the future. Ms. Vermeersch, a writer for the school newspaper, clearly trying to make a name for herself by writing a controversial article about a school project, is merely one disgruntled student who completely misunderstood David Miller?s intention of using the example of a woman with a code on her denim jeans. He was not dehumanizing women?he was giving a real life example of an over seas use case for jeans. It seems that you are basing the ?failure? of this trial on her negative comments. Ms. Dietz, who also works for the school newspaper commented that she could not name a student who was participating in the trial. Well, Ms. Dietz must not know too many students then, because just last week, L3, a campus eatery, was flooded with students interested in learning how to scan and create their own codes. It is interesting that the writer was unable to find anyone on campus to comment on that event.
Over the past 8 months, our team has been meeting with campus groups, creating use cases for codes, posting signs on a weekly basis, and working closely with the student body to see what they want out of this innovative product. In other words, we are capturing the voice of the customer in order to tailor this product and its applications to the needs and wants of its potential users. We meet on a daily basis with professors, campus leaders, student groups, and Mobile Discovery executives to make this trial a success and nothing was said about that. I am personally offended by this one-sided article. It gives a bad name to Mobile Discovery, Case Western Reserve University, The Institute of Management and Engineering, and myself.

MEM Student at Case Western

Posted by: crb14   Posted on: 04/10/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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