EarthSense, Inc.
This week in class we had the opportunity to listen to a University of Illinois Alumni, Mike Hansen. Mike studied Industrial Design here at the University of Illinois and now currently works out of research park as a Freelance Designer for EarthSense, Inc. Mike began his talk going in-depth on what EarthSense does as a company. EarthSense is a “true start-up” with under 10 employees that work tirelessly to develop their machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics to assist farmers in gathering data to better understand their crops. EarthSense’s mission is to create an easier way for farmers to understand the health of their crops without having to bust their backs and rummage through the dirt to gather the information they need. After the background of the company, Mike told us more about his job as an industrial designer for these products that are always being developed and innovated. With a product that is on the frontier of innovation in this market, Mike is always making and altering aspects of the design to the robot. Since Mike does so much iteration with his designs he told us about the importance of his 3D printing skills. With 3D printing, Mike is able to conjure up ideas and create a physical product to test in fractions of the time for fractions of the price. Mike helped me really helped me understand not only the importance of iteration when developing a product but also being willing to fail often and fast.
Building a Brand
For the remainder of class Professor Vishal tasked our teams to come up with a team name and logo. My team and I really had some fun creating our brand. When trying to figure out the name for our company we tried to go with a name that related to fluidity and movement. After twenty or so minutes of deliberations, we decided on MOVI. MOVI is short for “moving” because beyond our one product we want our brand to represent motion, so we can help all with prosthetics move better. When thinking about our logo we decided to go with a triangle. The reason we wanted to do a triangle was that triangles are the strongest shape in the world. It is a symbol of strength and structure and when creating our products, we want our brand to represent fluidity and strength. After we created our name and logo we had our first opportunity to work with the 3D printers. It was a lot of fun designing our brand and seeing a physical copy of our idea no more than 30 minutes later.
Meeting with Jenna
In our meeting with Jenna, we were able to get a head start on gaining a user perspective on our product. Before we decided to move forward with our project we need to make sure this was a product she not only felt like she needed but also wanted. Our protective knee pad needs to have important specifications to fill the requirements of a useful product. We talked about the importance of compatibility, light-weight, easy attaching and detaching. Finally, to gauge interest in potential future consumers, we wanted to bring a customizability aspect into the product. Since we will be 3D printing our product, we had an idea of engraving tattoos and designs into the protective cover. Moving forward, we need to get a scan of Jenna’s leg to be able to get accurate measurements for our design. I am looking forward to our progress on our project and designs in this upcoming week.
My name is Ryan Kane, and I am a senior graduating in the spring of 2019 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Gies College of Business. I have a double major is both Supply Chain Management and Information Systems and Information Technology.
Hi Ryan, I really like what your team is doing. The choice of the triangle being the shape of the logo impresses me much, and I am fond of the idea that triangle is the most robust shape in the world and that’s why you chose it. You are making excellent progress in your research project as well. I agree with you that the customization would benefit much more people, maybe you can consider how to use the scanning technology to capture the data. As you moving forward, I would encourage you to talk with more users and understand their common needs.
Hi Ryan, I am very impressed by what your team finds as an opportunity. I think this would definitely be helpful to protect the prosthetic leg. I also like your idea of customizing your product with engraving tattoos and other designs. However, I think that one thing your team may want to keep in mind in your consideration is that customizing also means that there will require a constant modification on the product model, and this may limit the number of customers or people who can benefit from it. It is important to consider this factor when your team designs the product. I think a standard product with specific areas that can be customized can save a lot more effort and enables the product to be distributed to more people.