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Here at Glideology, we have a passion for developing our customer’s ideas. We offer continuous support and guidance from it being an initial concept to an amazing reality. This passion for developing is seen in everything we do, whether it customer’s ideas, staff members to bring out the best in them and to our continued development of Glideology.

In March three students joined us from Worcester Sixth Form. We were keen to make this a beneficial experience for both the students and Glideology as a business rather than seeing it as a burden and letting it affect our daily operations. Having the students actively work together as a team, on a live project would create an end result making a much more meaningful experience than to just have them watch over our daily tasks with little input or end result.

After a guided tour of all of the specialised rooms we talked about their skills so we could shape the experience.

Glideology are developing our own products, so this was a perfect way to gain more insight into one of our prototypes and the students could help us with initial market research through to web design. We chose one of our prototype products, a rugged waterproof battery pack, to present to them. Very little research had been carried out on the product so we set the students some tasks to find out more. This was a great way of getting them to work together especially as they hadn’t met before, and it would be great to see if one of our prototypes would actually be marketable.

For the first two days, they were tasked with meaningful research online to see if there was actually a gap in the market. This included market research on competitor products. It was fantastic to see the students go from being reserved and quiet to engaged and throwing ideas around. As marketing wasn’t their main focus, this was to challenge them as much as possible to get them really thinking.

From this research, we learnt that our product was highly marketable. They also identified unique selling points and what markets could be considered for this product. They found out that our battery pack has so many uses, it can be sold to multiple markets.

After the research was completed, they designed a mock up website page where the battery pack could be sold after final development. They did an amazing job, it looked professional and kept it relevant. They’d come up with a brand, colour theme, pictures all through working together, it was very impressive.

Throughout this experience, we really pushed them by asking questions that made them think. The week gave them some real value and it was rewarding for them to essentially be given a product they had little information about, find out valuable market research and then develop its own website where it could be sold. They saw a great end result from all their hard work where we developed team working skills and enabled them to think outside the box. There was great feedback from the students about their experience, although they found the week tiring, they really enjoyed it and would love to visit again.

We have also learnt from them. We are now ready to progress our battery pack as they found a gap in the market, with customers to market towards and a start on a website that can now be built on.