Identifying Interests
The first step to our project was to identify possible areas of interest that we would base our projects on. In order to reflect on our own interests and learn about the rest of the class we completed an interactive class Wakelet activity.
Wakelet Tell me about yourself!
One of my favorite memories is visiting Denmark and the Netherlands. I visited the LEGO House and also visited family members. I am probably more of an introvert. I learn best with hands-on interactive lessons. If I could only eat one food I would choose ramen. I am looking forward to being able to work on a project that will allow me to further research something I am interested in. My favorite subjects are math and physics. My favorite TV show is the Simpsons and anything Star Wars. I also like to work on hands-on projects in my free time like airplane models. My interests are further outlined on this page: |
Break It Apart! Challenge
Next, we formed groups of four and conducted the Break It Apart! Challenge. This activity allowed us to see what it would be like to work with our classmates while we finalized the groups we would be forming for the rest of the semester. This project also allowed us to learn more about how the engineering process functions. For this challenge I decided to look at a Nerf Blaster. I took apart the blaster completely and took detailed notes and pictures of the interior components. I also learned about sketching and drawing. A sketch showing the disassembled Nerf Blaster and its components is shown on the left and a sketch of the main functions is shown on the right.
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Finding Mentors
We found two mentors to work with us on our project:
Pieter Colenbrander - Electrical Engineer with O'Mahony & Myer
Bethany Miller - Psychologist with Sukha Yoga
These mentors will be able to help guide our project and provide us with feedback as we finalize project components.
Pieter Colenbrander - Electrical Engineer with O'Mahony & Myer
Bethany Miller - Psychologist with Sukha Yoga
These mentors will be able to help guide our project and provide us with feedback as we finalize project components.
Brainstorming
For the brainstorming process, our group used Padlet to record all of our ideas and research. All the brainstorming details can be accessed by clicking on this link:
Management Plan
In order to ensure that our team meets essential deadlines, we used an online resource called 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:
Time Management Plan: https://tinyurl.com/zvgnn9s3
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 key information that will influence how we decide to finalize our design. The questions included on the survey are shown below. You can also take our survey or view the questions by clicking this link:
Customer Survey: https://tinyurl.com/6a66ev8l
Project Proposal
The final step for the first design stage was to create a project proposal. Our project proposal includes all the research and planning we have done for our project up to this point. The proposal outlines the basic idea for our product and outlines how we will go about developing this design to become a more finalized version. It also included graphics and links for more additional details and research that we conducted. The end of our proposal includes citations for all the sources we used and a verification page that we will have signed when we finalized the initial proposal.
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Reflection
So far our project has been going very well. We have been meeting most of our deadlines and successfully narrowing down our potential designs. Each group member has been able to significantly contribute to the project and through the use of text messages and discord we have been able to overcome the barriers created by virtual learning. One deadline we did not meet was gathering results for our costumer survey. We were delayed on sending out the survey so we will have to wait a little longer before we can post and analyze the results but now that the survey has been posted we are back on track. One additional point we can improve on is doing a better job at regularly keeping our time management plan up to date. Throughout this first project step I learned much more about how to work in a virtual setting. Without being in the classroom managing your time a home becomes much more important. I also learned how to successfully collaborate in a virtual environment by making sure to communicate with my team members outside of class.