Connected Devices/Projects/Project Magnet

Project Magnet
Author(s)
Mozilla
Released
2016.02.17 (Initial Pitch)
2016.03.16 (Pitch Update)
Innovation Status
Stage 1 (Validation)
Website
https://mzl.la/magnet

Project Magnet is your own, personal user agent for the content that is around you. Instead of getting a list of URLs and you having to browse each link to understand how you can interact with the content, Project Magnet will enable you to have an interactive and friction less experience. The experience will always be fully customizable by you, so you can use it for your maximum enjoyment.

We've just kicked off this project, so stay tuned for details on our next steps, but if you would like to get involved as a tester, developer or adviser, you can get in touch with our connected devices participation team.

Project overview

The Internet is a vast communication infrastructure capable of many different things. The World Wide Web is simply the way we interact within the Internet. The world wide web is what made the internet useful to everybody, rather than just a select few.

The Physical Web has the ability to get rid of all the IOT apps altogether by presenting a much simpler way to interact with our devices. And in fact, it is the exact same thing that the World Wide Web used to harness the internet.

BLE Beacons are one of the vast list of technologies that are cropping up everywhere to support the creation of the physical web, with particularly strong growth coming in Enterprise / Industrial, IoT and connected home, as well as more established markets like retail and personal asset tracking. The arrival of Eddystone is a huge driver here, particularly in non-retail markets, where new signals and features are particularly beneficial.

The aim of Magnet is to create a "browser" for the physical web. Magnet will surface contextually relevant content and actions on the user's favourite smartphone; all of this within the context of the Firefox Browser.

Project vision

"Project Magnet democratizes storytelling so people never miss the nearby stories that matter to them"

Problem statement

• User: It’s too easy for curious and inquisitive people to miss the fascinating stories around them.
• Storyteller: It’s too difficult and costly for storytellers to deploy content to physical locations.

Finding a solution for this problem will help us to answer questions as...

• How can I be notified when I’m near art by my favorite artist?
• What was life like on this street 100 years ago?
• What movie was filmed in this location?
• Who created this street art and why?
• Where can I learn more about this plant?
• Can I drink water from this fountain?
• Where can I buy this musician’s music?
• Can I still tip this street performer if I don’t have any cash?
• How does she make these beautiful cakes?
• Is it safe walking around this neighborhood at night?

Product Overview

• Mobile Client: Connects people with publishers via nearby experiences.
• Service & Tools: Enables publishers to deploy content into physical spaces, manage beacons, deployment health, and analyze impact.
• Hardware: Off the shelf Physical Web beacons, preconfigured to our service for frictionless setup.

Project status

After London experiments and the findings we got there, we decided that we need to try to upload our application to the stores to remove the installation barriers. At the end of August "Project Magnet" application was uploaded to the Apple Store and Google Play.

We also attended to the View Source conference in Berlin at mid September to run some experiments there, broadcasting schedule content so spur-of-the-moment attendees could quickly and confidently choose how to spend their time. We also give away beacons to the attendees and help them to configure them to try to measure them if that increased the number of interactions that they had during the conference and other possible uses. For more info, check User Insights from View Source

Now Project Magnet has a clearer user-value-proposition: 'Never miss the stories that matter to you'. From View Source we identified some key pain points and a second user: content providers or "publishers" that miss tools that enable them to deploy content to physical spaces. We're addressing the Physical Web content-gap problem by introducing additional content channels (GPS assisted) and an opt-in UX model will give users full control over the content they see (ad/spam/malicious content protection).

We presented the new pitch 0 to the Product Innovation Board on Oct 12th and passed Gate 0 again so from now to end of the year we are working on pilot to help us to validate that the Magnet experience attracts users to try the app and return frequently.

Program Status

Milestone	Date	Status	Status Notes
Formal Kick off meeting	04/13/2016	Done	Magnet Kick off
London All Hands Experiments	06/13/2016	Done
MVP review meeting in London	06/16/2016	Done	MVP review in London
Working week in MTV to define the Product Plan from Oct 3rd to 6th	10/7/2016	Done	Meeting notes during the MTV working week
Meeting with PIB to pass Gate 0 again	10/12/2016	Done	Passed Gate 0!!
Client Release with GPS functionality	10/24/2016	Done
Mozfest	10/28/2016	Done
MVP Client ready to be uploaded to the stores	11/23/2016	On target
MVP User Study/Experiment during two weeks	11/28/2016	On target
Gate 1 meeting with PIB	12/21/2016	Scheduled

Status Key

Color	Status	Key
	On Target	The project or deliverable is expected to meet its due date.
	Challenged	The project or deliverable is facing an issue that might cause it to miss its due date, but a “get well” plan has been developed to get it back on track.
	At Risk or Late	The project or deliverable is blocked or facing an issue that might cause it to miss its due date, and there’s no “get well” plan to get it back on track, or it is already late.
	Done	The project or deliverable has been completed.
	On Hold or Not Started	The project or deliverable has either not been started or has been placed on hold.

Archived Completed Deliverables

Deliverable	Date	Status	Status Notes
Magnet Assumptions/Hypotheses	5/03/2016	Done	They will be reviewed by the team on 5/04/2016 during our Weekly meeting
Project Magnet: User Research #1 Findings	6/01/2016	Done	Hypothesis we started out was not validated but other interesting questions raised from the User Study
Research Plan to be run in London All Hands	6/10/2016	Done	The plan was setting up three experiments (Sched, Reduce Anxiety and Personal hook). It consists on sending out communications to CD advertising the experiments, collect people’s contact info to send a survey and interview them after the All Hands week.
Project Magnet: User Research #2 Themes and Findings	7/13/2016	Done
Project Magnet: User Research #3 (View Source) Themes and Findings	9/23/2016	Done
Magnet MVP User Stories and Backlog

Program Timeline

Timeline for the Pilot (Post-Gate0)

Project Management

We use Waffle board for tracking github issues. All ongoing tasks are listed there.

Sprint Backlog

• Sprint 1 (April 18th - April 29th)
• Sprint 2 (May 2nd - May 13th)
• Sprint 3 (May 16th - May 27th)
• Sprint 4 (May 30th - Jun 10th)

After passing Gate 0 again on Oct 12th, these are the sprints we plan to work on for the pilot (pre - Gate 1):

• Sprint 6 (Oct 10th - Oct 21st)
• Sprint 7 (Oct 24th - Nov 4th)
• Sprint 8 (Nov 7th - Nov 18th) Current
• Sprint 9 (Nov 21st - Dec 2nd)

Development process

Repositories

• Magnet Code Repository: https://github.com/mozilla-magnet
• Magnet Documentation Repository: Magnet Google Drive

IRC

• You can find us on irc.mozilla.org, channel #magnet.

Methodology

The project is in early state but we are planning to use some agile practices as sprint planning, weekly meetings, standups in our Magnet vidyo room

• Weekly meetings in Magnet Vidyo room on Wednesday at 8:30 AM (Pacific Time)
• Development Sprint Planning meetings (biweekly) in our Magnet Vidyo room at 11:00 AM (UK Time)

Sprint Demos/Progress Report meetings

Date	Presentation	Vidyo Recording	Notes
6/02/2016	checking #1 Slides	checking #1 Video Recording	Feedback already added in the Slides
6/16/2016	MVP review in London	Not available	Feedback included here
7/15/2016	checking #2 Slides	checking #2 Video Recording	Feedback already added in the Slides
10/12/2016	Gate 0 pitch after pivoting	Gate 0 pitch Video Recording	Gate 0 approved with caveat to nail down the use cases / segments in one week
10/21/2016	Project Magnet Follow up after Gate 0	Project Magnet Follow up after Gate 0	We were requested a follow up meeting after passing Gate O to specify the target audience and also the use cases we will focus on.

QA/Testing

• User Stories and Acceptance Criteria for each of the features defined can be found here
• Test cases related to the sched integration here
• Test cases defined for the UI App (WIP) here
• Faking location in Android and iOS to discover Virtual/GPS locations
• Content Discovery Checking for GPS/Virtual Beacons

Participation

Getting in touch

• The best way to get in touch with us is to come and chat in our irc channel channel #magnet of irc.mozilla.org and through Discourse where Participation has created a specific discussion forum for Magnet together with the rest of Connected Devices Trains.

References

• Innovation Board pitch deck (2016.03.16)
• Magnet wiki in Github

Team

• Wilson Page - Project Lead / SW Engineer
• Francisco Jordano - Engineering Manager
• Sam Giles - SW Engineer
• Isabel Rios - SW Engineer/QA
• Francis Djabri - UX
• David Bialer - Product Manager
• Maria Oteo - EPM