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Management Team Wins With Idea for Mobile App That Does it All

PhodioJam Logo

Management graduate students won a marketing research contest with their idea for PhodioJam, a product that would let users work with photos, video and audio all in the same mobile app.

Kids could play rock star, creating voice effects and perfecting their pitch. Moms could show off their babies’ first steps and words, laying voice and music over video and photos. This could all be done on smart devices and shared with the world via Facebook and Twitter.

The idea came from a team of six UT Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management students who placed first in a contest that asked them to research the mobile application marketplace and design an award-winning product. Their idea, which they named PhodioJam, ties social media networking with audio recording, video and photos.

“With PhodioJam, kids will be able to actually record their own audio track and manipulate the audio and video files that are at play, and they’ll be really easy to share with their friends with just a click of a button,” graduate marketing student Amanda Trapp said during her team’s presentation. “We believe that PhodioJam will combine the audio, video and photo manipulation tools that users desire for their smart devices in one convenient package and at no cost to users.”

Trapp’s team, along with three other teams made up of five to six graduate marketing students, recently pitched their ideas to a panel of marketing industry judges at the Jindal School Marketing program’s NetBase Social Media Competition. The objective of the contest was to use the Netbase consumer and social media research software to analyze the mobile app market to uncover an opportunity and develop “the next killer mobile app.”

Moblie Applications Contest JSOM

The NetBase program helped the team discover what ideas were trending among users in the marketplace.

Winning team members – Trapp, Danae Bennett, Hsin-Yun Chen, Isabelle Shi, Min Shin and Xin Wang – received $2,000 for their idea for an application that would allow users to easily view, edit, organize and share digital photos – and add music, voice and video – all within the social networking environment. The application would be free to users and compatible with all iOS devices.

Before developing their ideas, each team used NetBase to pinpoint which top five devices consumers use for mobile apps as well as the top five app categories.  By looking at positive and negative “buzz,” the team learned that iPhone and iPad are the most loved devices and “photo and video” and “social networking” are the most popular and talked about categories, Bennett said.

Moblie Applications Contest JSOM

PhodioJam is intended to fill a markektplace niche for reasonably priced mobile applications with broad capabilities.

“Coming up with an app was a little overwhelming because there are a million applications out there, so we were trying to come up with something that’s new. We looked at competitors to see what people were complaining about, and we wanted to take what everyone already loves and combine them into one to come up with PhodioJam,” Bennett said

Trapp told the audience of judges, students and faculty members that applications that PhodioJam would compete against are either too expensive or have limited capabilities.

After the student presentations, Jindal School Dean and Caruth Chair of Management Hasan Pirkul thanked the judges, congratulated the students who participated in the contest and announced the winning teams.

“This is one of the highlights of the week for me because to me this is much more than what we do in the classroom,” said Pirkul. “This is precisely the type of activity that I always encourage my colleagues to undertake that we can provide to you as a value-add for your education, and it’s great that you are taking advantage of it.”

The other winning team in the competition developed Crosspath, a geocaching game application that allows players to set up their own team activities. The team included management grad students Cassie Clayton, Michael Fox, Saumya Gopi, Dana Magnuson, Ashleigh Pembroke and Craig Shacklett.

Media Contact: The Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, [email protected].

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