Overview
The ultimate goal of design step one was to create an initial project proposal that outlined the basics of what we wanted to do over the course of the project. In order to achieve this we had several conceptual brainstorming sessions and worked on a few miniprojects.
Break it Apart! Challenge
To start off with the semester we did a project where we took an everyday object apart to examine the engineering principles that were applied to it. This project was a good introduction to the intricacies of engineering and effectively showed how prominent it is in everything we take for granted.
Brainstorming
For the brainstorming process, our group used Padlet to record all of our ideas and research. You can see how our ideas developed by clicking below.
Finding Mentors
In order to get help from professionals in the field we chose to focus on in our Capstone project, our group contacted two mentors, one psychologist and one electrical engineer.
Pieter Colenbrander - Electrical Engineer with O'Mahony & Mye
Bethany Miller - Psychologist with Sukha Yoga
Management Plan
In order to ensure that our team meets essential deadlines, we will be using Toggl to plan out the project timeline and assign tasks to specific team members. Our team's time management plan can be viewed by clicking on this link:
Customer Survey
One of the last steps to the first design stage is to conduct a customer survey. Through our survey we hope to learn important information that will help guide our development of our final design. You can take our survey or view the questions by clicking this button:
Initial Project Proposal
The last step of the first design stage was to create an initial project proposal. Our project proposal includes all the research and planning we have done for our project thus far. The proposal outlines the idea for our product and explains how we will go about developing this design. It also includes images and links for more details and research that we conducted.
Reflection
Overall our project has been going well so far. Doing a project like this virtually is bound to have some difficulties but we have dealt with these issues fairly well. We have made sure to communicate well and each team member has contributed meaningfully to our project so far. One thing that could definitely improve is our productivity during tutorials. Given the short time we have during those days it is difficult to get anything started and often times we lack the motivation to get anything done during them. Another thing wee could improve is our time management plan. We have our GANTT chart but we have been pretty lackadaisical about it. With that being said our project has been going smoothly so far and we are ready for any obstacles that may come in the future.