Product Innovation

For our Product Innovation class, we were tasked with joining groups of three to five people and designing an electronic-consisting product that was not currently on the market. Then, the class would be separated into two semesters. The first would be engineering, building, and prototyping. The second would primarily focus on business, marketing, and finalizing aesthetics. My group decided to build and sell a temperature-adjusting pet harm/coat. The product used Peltier Sensors, a Variable Resistor, Switches, an LED Screen, and a 16 Volt Battery to control and manipulate the temperature output. 

As this was a prototype, the circuitry and build itself was subpar. It was not contained and was basic; haphazardly so. During the prototyping process, our group ran into many complications in the building. Firstly, the initial resistor and circuitry did not work due to incorrect voltage inputs, faulty wires, an incorrect initial circuit diagram, and the resistor being old/used. Also, our initial power supply was incorrect and too low to operate the Peltier system. We further faced issues in the wires burning later on in the process as well.

Though, we were able to fix and salvage the issue(s) within the deadline. It received a maximum score in the final checkpoint for semester 1 prototyping. We learned a lot of critical information which was helpful and will be helpful for future endeavors including product manufacturing, testing, debugging/fixing, and overall product design process. A video showcasing the final prototype is below.

In terms of the ESLOs, this project fell into three main categories. The first, of course, was Strategic Learners since we learned challenging topics, identified and recalled circuit diagrams and how to build circuitry correctly, and continuously learned from our mistakes during the building process. Secondly, is Innovative Thinkers as we thought about innovation and product creation unconventionally and shared our knowledge to solve problems. Last but not least, was Articulated Communicators since we had to work as a group and cooperate, remember each of our roles, and contributions, and understand what needed to be done or fixed.