Solve a Word Problem

For this project, our task was to research a world problem, relevant to us or not, then solve it. We ended up choosing nicotine addiction as our topic.

Originally, our group wanted to focus our solve a world problem project on suicide and mental health, but decided to address teen nicotine addiction and vaporizers. We wanted to stop the availability of teens getting their hands on vapes, through wholesale, or resale, while keeping costs near the same for of age users. We decided to put a fingerprint sensor on the vape, that has to be activated upon purchase. The sensor will unlock the vape for the user, but can not be opened by anyone but the owner. This will help prevent resale to minors.

  1. Identify Need - To figure out our need, we brainstormed multiple ideas and interests with our group. We decided to focus on teen nicotine addiction. We wanted to research and create a prototype that would not only solve our solution, but also be relevant and appealing.
  2. Research the Problem - Each person in our group researched different articles about our topic, and wrote 3-5 words summarizing each paragraph. We used these summaries and shared them with our group members, finding the most important and relevant information.
  3. Develop Possible Solutions (and Brainstorm) - Our group brainstormed all relevant topics at our school and in our society, deciding on our most interesting topic.
  4. Select the Most Promising Solution - Choosing a solution was very difficult because we had so many solutions. Each solution had different pros and cons, which our group reviewed. But we ended up deciding to use a touch ID sensor. This would keep the cost at a minimum while stopping resale to minors.-
  5. Construct a Prototype - To create our prototype, we used a digital design website provided by our teacher. We decided to keep the design simple, but efficient. We used the most common vape design, the Juul, and added a touch ID sensor on the upper half of the devise.
  6. Test & Evaluate the Prototype - Due to our lack of materials and time, we could not design a physical prototype to test. However, we could use our knowledge about nicotine addiction to see how our product would affect the real world. If the sensor was put on all vape devices, the teen vaping epidemic would diminish and would keep retailers sales to only of age customers.
  7. Communicate the Design - Our group presented our idea in front of our peers to communicate our design. This was effective because vaping is an issue at our school and it was an easy way to show our design to a teacher and 30 students.
  8. Redesign - Our group never made a physical prototype, so we could not redesign our product. If we had more time and accessibility, we would be able to make multiple revisions from our initial idea.
  9. Repeat - If we were given more time and money, we would consider repeating these steps, but our design was very simple and only would need minor changes.

Reflection:

During this project I portrayed my character very well. I always kept my group in a good mood and tried to make jokes even when we were working. I also worked hard on all of my work, while messing around a little bit. I also excelled in critical thinking. I worked very hard on our research and helped come up with the idea of our product. This project was very challenging for me because I have never done anything like this before, which made it very fun at the same time.

I need to work on my time management. During the research I started to struggle and fall behind, so I had to work very hard for a short amount of time, instead of spreading my time out throughout the whole project. I also need to work on my creativity. Our product was effective, but very simple, if I thought harder, I could have made a more unique product, which could have been more appealing to our audience. Overall this product was very fun, but very challenging at the same time.