Introduction

One of the first weeks of the semester, DFA (Design for America) came to our class and talked to us about the design process, specifically design thinking. We learned that when coming up with a new product, one should not first think of the product. Instead, they should think of a problem they have encountered that could be solved with a product. After they have identified a problem, they could then come up with possible solutions and eventually pick the best option.

The problem that our group identified early in the year was that many college students encounter great levels of stress throughout the year due to adjusting to living on their own, as well as grades. Our group set out to find a relatively low-cost solution to this problem, as many college students won’t have a lot of money to spend.

Possible Solutions

After brainstorming in class one day, our group came up with three possible solutions that could help reduce levels of stress in college students. The first was a stress monitor that could measure some sort of bodily signals, such as blood pressure, that could signal that you’re stressed. If one’s blood pressure got too high, the sensor could let you know that you’re getting too stressed and that you should take a break. However, this product had no real way of relieving stress, only identifying it. Our second idea was a product that would allow students to have their own garden indoors. We did some research and found that gardening has great effects on people. We knew that many college students wouldn’t have large yards to garden in, so we wanted to make sure that it could be done indoors. Our last idea had to do with meditation, which has also been shown to decrease stress levels in people. We were thinking to possibly make something that could help facilitate meditation for someone.

Research on Plans

We decided to go the indoor gardening route after seeing all the positive effects gardening had on people. Some of the research we found is listed below, there are a ton of benefits to gardening!

A University of Michigan study showed that gardening increased memory retention in subjects by up to twenty percent. It has also been shown to positively affect concentration both at home and at work. Tasks that were performed under the influence of nature also were performed with greater accuracy. This is because nature stimulates both the senses and mind, which improves mental cognition and performance. All of this research showed our group how gardening could truly serve as a powerful stress-reducing agent. After we saw this research, we knew that creating a product involving indoor gardening was the way to go.

Final Solutions

After surveying the various options at hand our team decided to pursue a solution that allowed students to do indoor gardening in small contained environments like apartments or dorm rooms. Our innovation on this indoor gardening system was the idea to make the growing of plants modular, therefore you could plant as little or as many as needed. The modular holsters for the plants would be placed on top of a fish tank to make a makeshift aquaponic system. The aquaponic system would allow for easy maintenance of the plants, fish, and the entire ecosystem. Perfect for a college student with little time on their hands.

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Prototyping Process

The prototyping process went through three phases: low fidelity paper prototype, cardboard, and finally a functional product. The low fidelity paper prototype was meant to figure out if this could be done at all. To see if our product could exist in 3D space and allow our team to easier visualize what our finished aquaponic tank might look like. The paper prototype helped us with the sizing of pieces. Next, the cardboard prototype served as a sturdier paper prototype that helped our team figure out what realistically made sense for the stacking of modular pieces. The cardboard prototype helped us learn that four pieces were most likely the ideal number. Finally, we made the functional prototype. The functional prototype was extremely useful for testing the product in an open environment to get feedback and improve it before making the final finished version.

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Testing the Product

To test the product we purchased a bin from the store and placed our acrylic lid on top with water going through our modules to replicate what the product might look like and function like. Overall, it was very useful for showing it to our two users. We asked questions ranging from how they felt about it to what they would prove about the product itself. From this, we were able to compile notes about the product and moved forward to figure out how we could work on improving the product from what we had.

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Challenges Encountered

There were three main parts in which our team encountered the majority of our problems: Fusion 360 modeling, 3D printing, and building the aquarium itself. For the Fusion 360 modeling, it took a lot of work just getting up to speed with the software. The software itself is quite complex and can make quite complex shapes in a matter of minutes. Once we learned the software itself we went through quite a few iterations. Getting it to work well with exporting it to a 3D printer posed some difficulties with getting the shape just right so each modular piece would perfect stack on each other. The aquarium, on the other hand, took a different nature of the issue. Getting the materials proved quite difficult and a lengthy process given the amount of acrylic we needed for our project. Through it all though we were able to create a good product and learned quite a bit through all our product iterations and learned a great software and where to find a great campus resource in case we ever need to build something again.

Interview Results

Through the culmination of rapid and iterative prototyping, we now knew the direction we were heading towards when it came to fine tuning our project.  Therefore, once we got to our prototyping stage we were able to formulate a questionnaire to interview our test subjects, Ian Szetho and Anthony Bermeo.  The survey that we conducted revolved around the functionality, aesthetics, likes and dislikes and finally how they would improve the product.  

We conducted the interview with Ian first and he thought the prototype worked well.  However, the aesthetics of the design was negative for him as our prototype was primarily a plastic bin for the fish tank as the acrylic was not ready, which gave the prototype a cheap vibe.  Ian, however, did find the design to be very soothing and relaxing.  He also liked the modularity of the product as one can upgrade it with more or fewer plants as needed.  Overall, he enjoyed the relaxing and modular characteristics of it but disliked the aesthetics of the prototype. Next, we interviewed Anthony Bermeo and he believes that he can see himself using the product in his home.  He provided some details about how he disliked the pump noise as well as the aesthetics of the bin.  Surprisingly even though Ian found the noise soothing and relaxing it seemed Anthony saw that as a negative. Saying the noise was little too loud and something that he would definitely change for the final product.  At the end of both interviews, we knew we needed to fine tune our product and so we decided that we needed to increase the quality and aesthetics of the products and identify an optimal power level for the water pump to minimize noise levels.

Final Product

After taking as much constructive feedback as we could accumulate, we were able to meet the demands of our testers by constructing the tank out of acrylic and tweaking the motor speeds.  Our final product is essentially emulating nature in a compact ecosystem.  This combined tabletop ecosystem is basically a self-cleaning fish tank with a self-sustaining indoor garden.  Our main goal was to provide a relaxing tool for dorm rooms and students that wanted to engage in light gardening.  We believe that we were able to develop a product that emits a tranquil ambiance as well as provide indoor vegetation for students all year round.

What We Learned & Conclusions

The process of creating our own product from the conception, to prototyping to user feedback taught us a lot about the human-centered design process.  The ability to go back and forth to fine tune a product means that it will perform as anticipated as well as fulfill its duty.  The prototyping stage really enabled us to make our product better with each step with trial and error.  The tools such as laser cutting, 3D printing, Fusion 360 and everything else we used helped grow our knowledge base and can be applied to numerous future projects of our own.  From rapid prototyping to acting as a drivetrain for innovation, 3D printing has the ability to shape the world and we believe that our project is one of many examples of its limitless possibilities.

Full Presentation Slides: http://bit.ly/2pQX1yc

With only approximately 8 weeks time, Team Supra sought to rapidly research, design, prototype, and bring to life a prototype that would effectively fulfill a business need, bridge a gap in consumer needs, and ultimately turn profitability for a business in the long run.

Ideating Process:

In the Ideating Process, Team Supra wanted to identify a business need in a consumer segment that was comprehensively understood. As Veronika, Olivia, and Ben are all college students, Team Supra decided to evaluate college-aged students who were living on a budget in a house or apartment. After observing consumers’ behaviors for a several days, Team Supra pursue a household trash compactor:

Team Supra agreed that trash is a common college struggle especially with full utilization of trash bags. Thus, Team Supra set out to create a trash compacting device that allows for greater trash bag “storage volume” to be achieved, leading consumers to have cost savings and environmental wellness at a reasonable price. However after receiving feedback from Professor Vishal, we realized that 8 weeks was not enough time to construct a product with numerous variables such as cost, size, and strength.

Refocusing & Designing with Innovation By Simplicity

Team Supra decided to tackle a new problem that commonly occurred at the Maker Lab: faulty door stops. Thinking of all the times students were locked outside the classroom, We challenged ourselves in creating a device that would efficiently ajar the door. With a very complex previous prototype, Team Supra was inclined to develop a resounding solution in a simplistic way. We realized that simplicity yielded easy constructability, low costs, and room for continuous improvement without drastically increasing the price.

We began by taking time to understand and explore the market. It became evident that the vast majority of doorstoppers sold between $5 – 15 (with premium stoppers above $20) and were all made of rubber material. Team Supra also met with Fab Lab to gain criticism on our idea. Fab Lab recommended a product with some form of a base that could attach to the door near the door knob with some form of a sliding mechanism that would allow for the locking position to turn “on and off”. While Team Supra initially hypothesized utilizing magnets to attach our device to the door, Fab Lab’s expertise made it evident that no household friendly magnets would be strong enough to sustain the impact of the door.  Additionally, Fab Lab recommended the employment of a wood coated in rubber resin or semi flex material for the actual stopping block portion of our product.

Prototype One

Using TinkerCad, Team Supra was able to create the following prototype:

From our first prototype, we realized we really liked the shape of the base and the handle attached to the base. The handle allowed consumers to easily slide our product from “on to off” and the base could hold our “stopping block”. However, we realized that our first prototype had nothing to prevent the sliding piece from detaching from the base and was too small and brittle ultimately resulting in breakage during testing.

Prototype Two

After analyzing our results of prototype one, we decided to increase the surface area, density of base & block, and overall thickness of our prototype. Additionally, we added a bar to prevent the block from sliding out. And here is a video demonstrating progressive success from our prototype:

After achieving progression, Team Supra decided to perform testing to reaffirm the consumer need for our product and also verify the usability and ergonomics of our product.

Quality Assurance and Consumer Testing

Using google forms, we created a consumer experience feedback survey to be completed after the consumer had personally experienced and utilized our prototype two.

Our survey questions centered around the following topics: demographic information, problem solutioning, aesthetics, ergonomics, applicability, durability, and willingness to purchase. Additionally, we realized the necessity in random sampling and ensured our sample had participants of all different years, majors, and household incomes in school. And, our key consumer insights were as follows:

From a scale of Not At All(1) to Absolutely(7), it becomes evident that our whole sample agreed that our prototype solution solved the current business problem.

Additionally, we saw that overall our product was relative easy to use, but there was an opportunity to enhance the attachment experience.

Our participants believed that our prototype could sustain impact from the door as and stay stationary. However, we did see a small discrepancy in Doorjar’s impact sustainability and impact stability (or stationing capability) and realized keeping the prototype base stationed to the door could be an area of improvement.

Lastly, our results show that our subject participants were relatively happy with our product and most were relatively willing to purchase our product at an average price of $7.73.

Prototype 3

In our final prototype, we made the base material out of PLA, printed the block material out of semi-flex, and printed it with a 40% infill. And our final product proved to be even more successful than the previous attempt.

Next Steps & Time Constraints

With only 8 weeks, we were forced to stop our prototyping efforts and prepare for our final presentation and wrap up for this class. However, had we had more time we would have pursued four additional features. Team Supra would have potentially utilized clear plastic or acrylic to enhance aesthetic appeal for Doorjar. Dual functionality would be added giving DoorJar both ajaring and locking functionality. Bluetooth functionality would have been implemented alerting consumers when their doors are fully locked and open and some unique attachments could also have been added to the door.

In terms of bringing DoorJar to market, Team Supra did some due diligence and was able to prove profitability margin of 23.35% with Doorjar. This was derived from a $5.94 cost per unit (PLA and SemiFlex material costs researched and labor, utilities, and building costs estimated) and a $7.75 retail price that was proven through our feedback survey. Lastly, Team Supra segmented its implementation plan into 4 unique categories. Initial Capital Investment would seek funding for our project in order to purchase 3D equipment, hire employees, and pay building costs. Relationship Development with Suppliers would ensure low raw material prices and overall low costs for the product. Commercialization begins the creation of our product seeking for opportunities to cut process inefficiencies, cycle flow time, and identify bottlenecks within the process. Marketing & Sales ensures awareness of the our product and that Doorjar remains successful with a loyal consumer base being relentless built.

Click here for our google slides!!!

Over this past semester, I’ve learned so much in the digital making realm. I came in wanting just to earn a credit for school but ended up gaining so much more out of it. The experience was invaluable and I’ve learned so much more about what this university can offer to its students. I’m sure the knowledge I’ve learned this semester will certainly benefit me in the future and beyond college.

What I learned:

3D Printing

One of the big lessons I learned, of course, was how to 3D print objects at the Maker Lab. Learning how to 3D print was definitely one of my main goals that I wanted to achieve coming into the class. From learning how to load up filament into the 3D printers to how to properly slice an object prior to uploading it to the printer I think I learned a lot about the functional capabilities of 3D printers. I learned the limitations of 3D printing and at the same time what the maximum limit of what they can achieve. For example, one issue we encountered was that our water pump’s exit valve wasn’t properly fitted for the tubing we bought. To resolve this we simply took the dimensions of the current water pump valve and 3D printed a new exit valve that fit more to the dimensions of our tubing. Then we attached it to the valve and it worked!

Below is a small GIF of us working with Vishal on 3D printing.

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Watch the full video about BADM 395 here: https://vimeo.com/216385308

Fusion 360

Personally, I didn’t expect at all to learn how to any type of modeling or creation of actual objects in software. When we were exposed to Fusion 360 my mind was thoroughly blown. The software could really achieve incredible things that I had never even thought of. There were seemingly no boundaries to what could be made in Fusion 360, which was absolutely incredible. It even exported your models into Cura ready to be 3D printed just like that! Fusion 360 for our project was absolutely vital because we were making brand new objects that had never been made before. So we were working off from scratch and had to use a semi-advanced software to make what we needed so TinkerCAD was off the table. Pictured below was just one of many iterations of our modular plant holders. Learning Fusion 360 was definitely frustrating at times but honestly, the reward of transitioning a product in your head to a real life functioning object was more than worth the steep learning curve.

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Full post on Fusion 360: https://publish.illinois.edu/digitalmaking2017/fusion-360-making/

Prototyping

Learning how to iterative prototype in BADM 395 was a great experience. With how the class is structured you naturally get into the groove of making, testing, and then (most likely) failing. Which is a great way to learn how to iterative prototype. The idea itself we had honestly morphed, changed, and evolved into what we ended up doing. Being able to go through all the stages of prototyping and physically building out different models was extremely helpful for the whole process. Personally, we built everything from paper to cardboard prototypes it was a great experience. Especially when we interviewed people on how they felt about our product using the prototype which was valuable in how we intended on changing or improving our product before the final presentation. Below is a picture of two of our three prototypes. The paper prototype was the first one we made before moving onto a more solid cardboard prototype. The third prototype we made was a water functional one with a $0.98 Wal-Mart bin as our fish tank.

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Full post on prototyping: https://publish.illinois.edu/digitalmaking2017/cardboard-fun-near-bif/

Learning About Fab Lab

Exploring the Fab Lab was certainly one of the highlights of the entire class. There our class got to learn about the various resources offered at the Fab Lab and their overall mission. The things that the Fab Lab does for the community is also very incredible. From teaching the art of making things to hosting workshops for kids they do awesome work at the Fab Lab. They also help advise students, just like us, on how to make. For our own personal project, we used the Fab Lab to help us cut out the glass materials we needed to make our final fish tank. Additionally, we used the Fab Lab’s resources to help us order the acrylic in order to make the fish tank in the first place. Overall, they have a ton of resources over at the Fab Lab ranging from physical tools to the great mentors and instructors they have there that can assist you with pretty much anything you want to do.

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Full post on Fab Lab: https://publish.illinois.edu/digitalmaking2017/learning-the-fab-lab/

Conclusions & Takeaways:

Honestly, I loved my time in BADM 395. It took a lot of hard work and a lot of time but overall this one of the most rewarding classes I’ve taken in college. In the College of Business there isn’t a lot of opportunities to make physical objects and products but here, in this class, we were able to do just that. It feels very empowering to be able to have thought of something and execute it to that degree of actually making the product happen over just a semester’s worth of work.

Moving on and going to California I really do hope I’ll be able to find similar resources such as the MakerLab or the Fab Lab. They are certainly organizations that I’d like to stay involved with moving forward as their potential to impact people seems almost limitless in scope.

With that, I hope everyone in their life at some point gets to experience the joy of imagining a product and then actually making it in real life because it is just wonderful. That, I believe, is how the future problems of the world will be solved. By regular people who are affected by the world’s problems getting access to tools like these and working to get their ideas made into real world products that can help people.

For more information about any of my projects or the video feel free to reach out to me at szethoian8@gmail.com.

Week 12 is the design audit for all the groups. This is where teams act as auditors of another teams in the class. Each group will provide an overviews (both visual and verbal) of their current designs of their projects. The auditing team will actively listen and then ask a series of questions regarding the feasibility, functionality and design of the other teams design. Questions commonly asked at the design audit are shown below:

1. Why did your team choose this particular design?
2. What issues is your team trying to resolve?
3. How will the various parts of this design be fabricated?
4. How will you test your team’s design?

These questions are design to spark conversations regarding design and functionality of the product. Speaking to other teams fosters a collaborative creative thinking space which allows the group being audited to see a view point which is unbiased. This encourages the DIWO, “do-it-with-others” maker mindset.  This gives the mentality that the people around have diverse experience and can be possibly the missing piece to the puzzle. Having an unbiased team audit the design and functionality of another team could raise possible concerns, limitations and improvements to the group’s design which the group being audited had never thought about. Each team learned so much from others and we were able to help each other perfect our designs and solve issues and flaws in our designs. Below are summaries of what each team learned as well as images of them in a design audit.

XNihilo & BCC Creations

XNihilo (Ana, Anjali, Yuanzhen “Ben”) – H2Go, the hydration wristband

Feedback: Make the red light blink and then stay red so that the user can still tell that they are dehydrated. Possibly look into vibrations along with light signals or variations of the product in which it can be used as an attachment to a water bottle or just a band for people without a FitBit

“A quick recap of what we did during the past weeks: we are designing a dehydration band to remind the users to drink water. In the last week, we have successfully tested our customized sensor on the regular Arduino and we also generated a hand-made circuit.” – Yuanzhen “Ben”

 

“According to me, the feedback allowed the groups to get a different perspective on their products. It also gave a sense of how the users would want to change the product and what would benefit them more. We will definitely incorporate the feedback we received and hope to make the product that can be used by everyone.” – Anjali

XNihilo Circuit Prototype

BCC Creations – Brian K., Charlene, Carter – Home Security

Feedback: Think about possibility of having pets in the home and how that would affect product; looking into a reminder to set a home alarm before leaving the house because people may be in a rush to leave and may forget to set the alarm; look at making product more discrete.

“The feedback allowed our group to think about our product from a different perspective, and to also consider situations that we had not though of when we originally came up with the idea.” – Carter

 

BCC Creations Prototype

AquaPonics & Supra

AquaPonics – Kenny, Ian & John – Fishtank Aquaponics Self Sustaining Garden

Feedback: Make modules for the garden larger for root growth

“This actually gave us some great insight and the feedback that they provided will prove invaluable in the next couple weeks as we are finishing up our project.” – John

AquaPonics Prototype

Supra – Olivia, Ben, Veronika – Doorstop

Feedback: Create a much stronger structural base; Minimize the vibration the stopping component the doorstopper experienced; Utilization of either a stronger adhesive or multiple command strips on our prototype base.

“As Marty Cagan testifies in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Prototype Testing, “testing your ideas with real users is probably the single most important activity” in the prototyping process: and I honestly couldn’t agree more.” –Ben

The MakerLax & JJJ Inc.

The MakerLAX – Peter, Chase, Brian X. – Tie Helper

Feedback: Add some physical grooves to the tie helper not only to make it more flexible, but as a method to make it easier for the user to determine where each end of the tie may go; Look into resizing the design and maybe changing the thickness.

“This was different from our usual group sharing in that we actually had the chance to sit down and really delve deeper into another group’s work and vice-versa. ” –Brian

JJJ Inc. – Jorge, Jai, Xinlu – Smart Light Switch

Feedback: It is somewhat bulky and maybe arduous to install and/or remove;

“Our team also made huge progress for our own project —  the Smart Light Switch. Based on our experiments in last week, we decided to use a cross-shaped arm instead of gear. We connected the arm to the motor, and connected the motor to the Arduino board. Then, we connected the bluetooth module to the Arduino board. We found a smartphone application that allows us to control the motor to rotate through bluetooth. This app saved us a lot of hassle.” – Xinlu

JJJ Inc Prototype

Zerott – Taofik, Odelia, Tiffany – Robot

Feedback: keep our ultrasonic transducer would be better than a button because an ultrasonic transducer would be more interactive and impressive; focus more on the internal hardware versus the outerwear.

“Many of the suggestions that both parties pointed out were important and logical. Obviously, as a team we need to take these suggestions into consideration and figure out if we will use these suggestions.” – Odelia

 

“My main take away from the design auditing process was to strive for a minimum viable product given the short timeline we have and to learn as much as we can while working on our projects.” – Taofik

Zerott Prototype

Zerott Prototype

It looks like all the teams are well on their way to presenting their wonderful creations!

This week has been yet another week of great progress. Since the beginning of the project I have learned more about our product and what is needed to complete the minimum viable product and have since then been stream-lining what features it will need as well as how I will go about doing that. The design auditing process did great work in helping me see some of the ways I can do this as well as give me a few ideas on how to execute the final product iteration. And this final iteration is coming along very well as the last thing to get the fully functioning prototype is the speakers and microphone. I wrote code and setup the electronic circuits to control the led, button, camera and the LCD display and be able to already record the stories (with video without audio). I also got a lot of insight into the JJJ Inc. team who also did a design audit for us as well. They were working on the smart light switch, I found their project interesting and saw they had a different approach to their project. My main take away from the design auditing process was to strive for a minimum viable product given the short timeline we have and to learn as much as we can while working on our projects. We should have our finished product before next monday and that thought excites me greatly. I look forward to seeing everyone’s final products.