Turning fieldwork into a “living classroom” (360° + AI): what would you productize first?
Turning fieldwork into a “living classroom” (360° + AI): what would you productize first?
I just read a Georgia Tech story about their International Disaster Reconnaissance (IDR) course where students documented real disaster-affected areas using high-res photos, video, and 360° immersive captures. They later revisited those captures to reflect and ask better questions.
A quote that stuck with me:
“A 360° capture lets students return months later and ask better questions.”
Why this feels bigger than a cool class project
What I’m seeing here (as a builder) is a repeatable pattern:
- Capture once, learn many times. A single field trip becomes a reusable learning asset.
- Context matters. 360° helps preserve “what it felt like,” not just a few photos.
- A library beats a one-off. The long-term value is an organized, searchable repository for courses, cohorts, and researchers.
Where I’m coming from
I’m involved with Filio, the visual reporting and field documentation platform used in the class. I’m trying to learn from this use case and understand what a real educational product version should look like beyond field reporting.
Questions for the IH community
If you were building this as a product for universities (or training programs):
- What would you ship first: search and tagging, lesson templates, or collaboration and annotation?
- How would you evaluate learning impact? Any metrics you’d actually trust?
- Would you price this per course, per student seat, or per department?
Interesting concept. Before picking what to productize, I'd anchor on who has the burning problem:
The question to answer first:
Who is already spending money (or significant time) trying to solve this problem badly?
A few segments worth investigating:
Tactical next step:
Find 5-10 threads where people in these segments are already complaining about training fieldworkers. The language they use will tell you what to call the product and what features matter.
If you want, I can put together a quick customer discovery brief for one of these segments: where they hang out, what they're complaining about, who the competitors are, and 10+ real quotes you can use. The "real quotes + threads" format tends to unlock positioning faster than building more features.
Which segment feels closest to your vision?