All Final Checks Completed & Anticipation

PREPARATIONS & LOOKING AHEAD

We started this week’s class with Vishal reviewing the Make-a-thon schedule in case any of us were confused or missed the Pre-Night Event. Following that, he introduced us to Valeri, a representative from Social Innovation @ Illinois. Social Innovation @ Illinois is one of our Make-a-thon’s Gold Sponsors and is funding the appearance of our mentors from Milestone Labs during the weekend of the Make-a-thon event.

Valerie also spoke to us about an opportunity to continue our innovative ventures during school while gaining funding and several experts as resources: the iVenture Accelerator. iVenture is a start up incubator that takes the form of a 10 week internship over the summer and a seminar class for a full academic year that allows participants to further develop their startup. The Accelerator provides $10,000 of funding to the startups chosen as well as stipends for its members to stay on campus over the summer. Throughout the internship and the class portion of iVenture, supplies its entrepreneurs with funding, experts, networking opportunities, and more. My teammate, Trevor Sibby, actually went through the iVenture Accelerator with his startup, Nouvo, which I mentioned last week.

THE LAST CHECKPOINT

Once Valerie finished up her presentation, we had time to work in our teams while we, team by team, met with Milestone Labs for a final project update review and advice session. My team, Solestice, went first. During our review with Milestone, we talked through our new thinking for our prototype. While before, we were thinking of using metal spikes for the tread, we have since then moved onto the idea of using a type of material similar to what is used on winter car tires, which have incredible traction for driving on ice and snow, as the main component to our product. While we have also considered a couple other materials, such as a shape memory alloy, we will be meeting with a materials science professor soon to confirm which option would be the best to use for the Make-a-thon event. We had also considered a couple of other attachment methods aside from Velcro, such as snap buttons. Oded from Milestone actually shared a YouTube video with us which has given us another method to consider – one where the user can simply step into the tread. Milestone also pointed us in the direction of considering the whole experience of using the tread, including what happens if the user falls down, whether or not the user has to take the tread on/off when travelling outdoors/indoors, as well as a keeping in mind the wear and tear of shoes. Overall, it was a very productive and positive meeting.

Once we finished up talking to Milestone, Solestice moved onto brainstorming the types of materials we would need at the Makeathon in order to complete our prototypes. We found out that winter tires are made of a material called hydrophilic rubber, so we tried looking around for something similar. However, since none of us are science majors, we struggled a little with reading all the scientific chemical names thrown at us in our search. In the end, we decided to go with trying to use a bicycle tire as a similar material to the winter tire and explaining to the Make-a-thon judges what our ideal product would include. Next, we looked for sites where we can obtain Velcro, straps, and other methods of attaching the tread with the goal of testing these different methods during the Make-a-thon to see which is the easiest for the user to use.

We are all super excited and cannot wait for the Make-a-thon event we will be attending next weekend!

91 Replies to “All Final Checks Completed & Anticipation”

  1. It sounds like your early prototype is going look a lot like a tire sandal! Can’t wait to see it. Well these reflections are getting quite repetitive so I’m excited to finally be reviewing the makeathon experience and physical products for the rest of the semester. Best of luck!

  2. Hi AJ,

    It’s cool to hear that winter tires brought your team inspiration with the potential material of the product! While selecting the materials, has your team also considered the weight of them? Since the users will be attaching the product to their shoes, you guys need to be extremely conscious about the weight as well as the effectiveness of it. In addition, I would recommend that you and your team consider the duration of the materials if you have not already. The users most likely will not want to use the tread for only one season which means that it needs to be durable to last multiple seasons. I am also wondering whether the majority of the treads on the market use spikes instead of things like tires because maybe the human weight is not enough to create traction compared to things like cars. This is why testing would be necessary. I am looking forward to seeing your prototype soon!

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