150 Hour Experience

For my 150 Hour Experience, I chose to participate in an independent study through the Engineering Department at Duke. In this experience, I was part of a multidisciplinary team consisting of three other undergraduate engineers whose goal was to conceptualize, develop, and deliver a novel product in the health and wellness space. Additionally, there was a team of graduate students managing the product's marketing and sales pitch. As a response to a lack of accessible and affordable soccer training products, our team designed a soccer goal frame that uses a grid of lasers to detect the ball as it enters the net. We called this system LaserF The system then determines the ball's position and speed and displays this to the user in a way that gives them immediate feedback. Futher work on this product would allow the user to store their session data and track trends. 

First, our team met to brainstorm ideas. We each identified problems that we hoped to solve and proposed products that could solve those problems. One of the members of my team was a soccer player. He told us that at the professional level, there were complex, expensive systems that used cameras to track the ball and see where it goes into the net. However, for the player at the high school or college level, there are no systems that fit within a program's budget. We decided that this was a problem we could attempt to solve. 

Next, with the goal of developing a low-cost system, we began designing our product. We conducted interviews with people who were using Duke's soccer field for club and intramural games, learning about their practice habits and what they would be willing to spend on a training system. With these findings in mind, we designed and built a frame that would snap onto an existing soccer goal and mounted on a grid of lasers that connected to a microcontroller to record successful shots.

This experience gave me very valuable insight into trying to create a business venture. I learned that good communication is key. Having two teams working in parallel led to many issues. There were often miscommunications where the management team expected a feature to be implimented that the undergraduate team had decided was not feasible to add within the deadline. This taught me that focusing on the value proposition is much more important than focusing on building a product right away. While we were building the product, the graduate team was still developing the value proposition for our product. This disconnect led to many problems for the teams. The key takeaway from this is that when launching a startup, you must fully understand the problem you are trying to solve before you develop a product.