Temperatures colder than Antarctica don’t stop us from innovating! This week’s class was different from most–due to inclement weather, we held class virtually. We were accompanied by Milestone Labs, who ran a workshop on design thinking and led us through how to convert our opportunities into tangible ideas to move forward with.
Over webcam, each team presented a mentor who we visited during Week 2 who inspired them and potential opportunities they could explore with said mentor. My team and I chose to move forward with the opportunity of designing a tread that facilitates walking on snow and ice for people who utilize prosthetic legs. With the guidance of Milestone Labs, we created an opportunity statement. We started by analyzing the audience, the limitations, other people involved, the environment, and usability of our opportunity. From this analysis, we synthesized our opportunity into the following statement: To create detachable tread attachments that can be used to travel in a variety of terrains.
Initially, our idea was to create a lightweight, affordable tread that could be used in snow and ice. After our workshop with Milestone Labs and speaking with Jenna, we learned that it is difficult to walk on sand and other terrains in addition to snow and ice. Thus, our new opportunity statement expands our audience to people, prosthetic users or not, who find difficulty walking in different terrains. For example, we even discussed how we could create a tread for people who wear heels in the winter time. This made me realize the difficulty that I personally have walking in different terrains. If we successfully create this new tread, or multiple treads, it could potentially benefit every walking person. And not only that, but the tread could also be applied to wheels. I look forward to next week to see the project start coming to life!
Hi there! I am a Senior studying Marketing and Information Systems/Information Technology. I chose to take this course in order to expand my creative and design thinking skills that I can apply to my future career. I am grateful that we are provided the opportunity to take this course as Business majors.
730 Replies to “Defining Opportunities”