Assignment Task: Electro Construct
Electro Construct is a new wireless electronics kit where the building blocks are electronic modules (or Electro Constructs: sensor actor modules), which wirelessly communicate with each other via Bluetooth.
Electro Constructs can be motors, lights, switches or sensors, and appear as 'drag and droppable' icons on the Electro Construct app, allowing users to easily make everyday objects part of the 'internet of things', but with one major advantage: there's no coding required.
According to the young entrepreneur behind the idea, Aagni Lahiri, while other products have to be wired and coded correctly before you have something that works, with Electro Construct 'you have something working straight away and then you learn about coding, so it makes you want to continue and make more complex systems. The idea is that you learn coding by making, as you realise that the same code occurs over and over again.'
In Electro Construct lab tests, children, students and adults - many of whom had never worked with electronics before - 'made wonderful things within two hours', Lahiri smiles. According to Aagni Lahiri, a lot of fun goes into the process. One eight-year-old built a toy car with proximity sensors to dodge obstacles in the room. 'Engineers spend a lot of time just trying to prototype these systems,' Aagni Lahiri continues. 'But when an eight-year-old can do it, that's really cool.' The question is whether Electro Construct will be 'cool' enough to attract the imagination of budding designers at a time when growth in the construction toy sector is starting to slow down.
As Electro Construct's slogan, 'the internet of everything for everyone', implies, the plain white modules have been designed to look gender- and age-neutral, so anyone (with basic computer skills) could use them. With prices ranging from £60 for Electro Construct Explore, the most basic starter kit (with three Electro Constructs and the Electro Construct app) to £240 for Electro Construct Pro, the most advanced kit (with 11 Electro Constructs, the Electro Construct app and the Electro Construct Cloud), many eight-year-old engineers might not be buying Electro Construct with their own pocket money just yet.
Required:
Advise Aagni Lahiri on the development of a marketing strategy to launch the Electro Construct in the UK market.