Our idea, due to be birthed in the morning of Day 5 took somewhat of a U-turn at about 6.30pm on Day 4 when we read the press release for 'Get Smarter in a Week' and realised that our baby was going to be too close to someone else’s. We'd been pipped to the post by Michael Aspel and Saturday night red button light entertainment. Doh! We couldn't see a beeb exec - with or without a soaking of Chardonnay - commissioning something so close.

So, we had the night and a few hours in the morning to put together Plan B. Over dinner, we stormed an idea we'd 'parked' earlier in the week and did a quick and dirty impromptu pitch to Frank and Rachel before retiring to bed for a early night. Getting up whilst the lark was still tucked up in its nest, we refined the idea and put together a presentation in the lab time we had left. With the clock tick-tocking, we presented what I think was, in the circumstances, a pretty decent proposition. Without a doubt we'd applied the processes we learnt in the lab and put something together with audience and their needs in mind.

My recommendations for lab virgins. #1. Research - make sure your idea is unique or takes a fresh twist on something that's already popular or that's just emerging; search the BBC site and your preferred search engine high and low for similar projects. #2. Get to know your trusted Volvo; look at the BBC's core values, what it wants to achieve and what it has to do to comply to its public broadcaster remit. #3. Get into the head of your target audience, live their lives, be them for a day. And if you haven't got an audience in mind, by heck, refocus so you do.

Monkey tennis anyone?
http://www.davidsquire.co.uk

We're here (that's me, David Squire and my esteemed co-collaborator Stuart Nolan) to try to create something that draws on our collective experience in thinking about games, the aging population, play, enjoyment and enrichment. We're also here for the ride, for me to learn more about pitching and about how to develop an idea better and for Stuart to apply his thinking on play and games and to do some magic tricks of course!

The feeling of being on a roller coaster comes partly from the relentless but exciting pace the lab operates on - despite the vast amounts of food available, I can't imagine Matt, Frank and the mentors piling on the pounds - but also because your feelings towards your project/your baby alters every couple of hours or so. One minute you think you've got it strapped, you've found the killer app, the next it's back to the drawing board and you're down in the doldrums.

The premise of shaping your idea around Needs, Approach, Benefits and Competition helps. As you think more about your audience's needs and their journey, your idea starts to reshape into something far more interesting and more considered. I must admit I was somewhat sceptical about spending an entire day on 'who's your user?' but having someone in mind (from usual demographic profiling to how their average day pans out) really tunes you in on how people use interactive content and what they want from it. If we get this bit right, the rest should follow on nicely.

I'm sure everyone here would admit that the fact this is a competition with the potential prize of a commission is in the back of your mind all the time. But what's great and amazing, in an increasingly competitive marketplace, is that people are genuinely helping each other shape and focus the development of other people's projects. We must have pitched our idea now 3-4 times over the first 2 days, and the response, feedback and interest gets more helpful and more heartfelt each time.

Luckily, and despite a little gushing there, we're managed to avoid any hippy bonding exercises - things that involve having to close your eyes or pretend to be someone (or worse something) else. Thank the DG for that!

So, as the dawn breaks over the misty hills of Masham, its day 3 in the Swinton House.