Back on "15 minutes pour moi" (15 minutes for me), a well-being project initiated by Guillaume Marchand and Benjamin Sabbah, and developed with the help of students from Wild Code School during a partner project.
From the creation to the realization of the project 15 minutes pour moi
Hello Guillaume! Could you introduce yourself in a few words? What has been your career path?
Hi, my name's Guillaume Marchand. I'm 24 years old, and I come from a small village about an hour from Strasbourg in France. After high school, I attended a prep class for physics and engineering sciences in Strasbourg, and then the so-called "passerelle" exams. These allowed me to enter the Master in Management program at Neoma Business School Reims campus. I followed a work-study program in this school and then completed a master's degree in business and graduated just a year ago.
For the past four years, alongside all this, I've been performing hypnosis shows for companies, theatres, and private events. Soon, I'll also be a hypnosis practitioner able to help people cope with their daily problems.
As part of a client project, you recently asked some Wilders to develop an application that revolves around well-being and alternative medicine. Could you tell us more about that?
Yes, as you can already imagine, I'm passionate about hypnosis and its virtues—but also about alternative medicine in general. After a meeting in the school of business with a person who became my best friend, we asked ourselves this question: How can we spread knowledge about these alternative and natural medicines and help people manage their daily disorders in the best way possible?
This is how we came up with the idea of creating the "15 minutes pour moi" project, which offers daily support for managing disorders such as stress, anxiety, phobias, and addictions.
So, we thought about a web application at first, but in the beginning, we had no knowledge in the digital field—and definitely not in coding.
Why did you call on our Wilders, and what did you like about working with us?
Our school (Neoma Business School) and several project leaders recommended the services of Wild Code School. So, I got in touch with Clément, who presented to me the school's functioning and the program with the Wilders.
I was immediately excited by the proposed format because of the fact that a whole team works on the prototyping of the web application and that it's all overseen by an instructor—but also by the proposed follow-up with a weekly meeting. The experience was very rewarding because it allowed me to identify problems that I hadn't previously thought about. Thanks to the knowledgeable team, I was also able to learn about coding but also cover server and project management.
Apart from all these professional and technical aspects, the soft-skills side of the students and the links I was able to establish with them throughout the project is something I particularly remember, and that's very important for me to highlight in this interview.
Wellness and technology: what's the turning point, and what are the issues?
In your opinion, has the wellness sector sufficiently integrated the digital turn? Why do you think so?
When we started the project, there were very few players who had made the digital leap. But since then, it's really fallen into place. Everything has been accelerated by waves of confinements. There are now more and more choices in wellness applications, from meditation and yoga to sports coaching.
What tech/wellness issues have you been able to identify in your professional and personal experiences?
The main issue I've noticed is that those behind the screen paradoxically need to be guided even more than in person, but with a maximum of choice and freedom.
Another challenge is keeping the person as long as possible on the product we offer, because digital has exacerbated our habit of moving very quickly from one thing to another without exploring much in depth.
What are the most important criteria to consider when combining technology and well-being?
The most important thing is to keep the human aspect in digital, which has been forgotten by many applications offering only virtual well-being tools. In my opinion, integrating people whose job is to guide people on a daily basis is essential to each digital product we develop.
Closing remarks: Guillaume’s future projects
Let's get back to you! What are your plans for the future?
At present, we're testing the web application we were able to develop thanks to prototyping handled by the Wilders, available at the following link: 15minutespourmoi.com and are building in parallel the much more elaborate mobile application that we plan to market in early 2022. The prototyping of the latter is almost complete and has entered the design phase.
I want to take this opportunity to make a small shout-out to readers of this article, because we're currently looking for a mobile developer as a third partner for the development of our application on Android and IOS, and we're willing to embark on an entrepreneurial adventure.
If you had to work with Wilders again, would you do it?
Absolutely! Whether it was humanely, professionally, or organizationally, I have very good memories of it, and it allowed me and my colleague to take a step forward in our project. So yes, that would be a great pleasure.
Thank you for all those answers! Any final words for our Wilders?
I'd like to thank the Wilders who worked on our project, the Wild staff who made it easy, and all the students I met while in the school.
I wish all future Wilders the best in fulfilling their ambition to become developers and in finding projects that will allow them to thrive.
Thanks for the interview!
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