Tag: opportunity statement

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Week 11!

This week was the final stretch before the week of the Make-a-thon. Class began with Professor Vishal clearing up everything regarding the Make-a-thon. The expectation and resources available during this event were explained. Once Vishal finished up we were given a presentation from social innovation representative Valerie. Valerie introduced to the class an opportunity to continue furthering their innovative ventures, while receiving non dilutive funding. This opportunity is provided by a program called the iVenture Accelerator. Which is a startup incubator. It’s a 10 week summer commitment and a full academic year seminar course. Participants receive $10,000 of funding and stipends throughout the summer. They not only provide this funding but have a pool of resources ranging from experts to additional funding opportunities. I am actually apart of the iVenture Accelerator. They really dive deep and help further your idea. They’ve introduced us to so many useful/helpful people. It’s really like a family. They bring you along and you become apart of this amazing ecosystem.

After Valerie’s presentation we met with Milestone Labs to give them an update of our progress to date. My team and I are team Solstice (team 1) so we went first. The folks at Milestone gave some good feedback and advice. They were delighted with our interviews and direction we’re going in. One thing we didn’t do was provide as much of our product as possible. We still have to do more sketches and ideation around a few key details regarding our product. From this meeting my team and I reconviented to brainstorm, reflect, and conduct a list of materials we need for the actual Make-a-thon. As a team we found this material called hydrophilic rubber, which is usually used in winter tires. We have a meeting with a material science professor to give us even more insight on materials and such. Also I have a professor who is a shoe cobbler on hi own time and he pointed us to a few materials as well. None the less we’re super excited for this event and our more refined product prototype!

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Week 5

This week we were introduced to four guest speakers: Sneha Subramanian from the Illini service dogs, John Hornick author of “ 3D Printing Will Rock the World”, Jeff Ginger from the CU Community Fab lab, and the Illinois Informatics Institute. We began with a brainstorming session with the Illini Service Dogs. We specially were looking at areas of opportunity with improving disabled users independence with service dogs. Ideas bounced around and some really interesting things came from this. After the brainstorming session John Hornick brought so much of the 3D printing industry to our attention. There are so many trends out there, but John emphasised 3 main trends. One of which is that 3D printing spurs innovation, it also increases democratization. Lastly 3D printing is full customizable. I personally really enjoyed all the different innovative projects globally that John mentioned to us.

Jeff from CU community Fab lab gave a very energetic and passionate overview of the lab itself. He told us of all the resources and network we have here on campus. He then went into showing some of his personal projects, all produced at the CU Fablab. He designed this really cool solar power laptop case that charged his laptop. He also created this octopus dongle sort of thing that has every plug in port you could think of. Jeff seems to really be passionate about innovation and I though his overall presentation was inspirational.

After the guest presentation we were given on from our TA Mehmet Aydin on Design Thinking. During his presentation he introduced us to the Design Thinking Modules. You have Inspiration- Ideation- Implementation model. You then have Empathy- Define ( we focus on defining the opportunity from an empathetic standpoint. Then you have Prototype- Test phase. Mehmet also mentioned the idea of diverging, converging and repeating the entire process. You have to just do it. It kind of ties back to last weak guest Mike Henson statement of, “ Fail early, fail often.” The design process is a process of decision making and doing things. You have to ideated on an idea and act on it. Fail and fail and through each failure new innovation ill emerge.

Once Mehmet’s presentation  we broke off into our teams to do a “Stories & Experience” exercise. The task of the exercise was for us to look at our interview Q/A and diverge deeper insight from them.We were able to really figure out our users frustrations, emotions, limitations, pretty much the good and bad. Solicestice in particular, was able implement the experiences of the user to create more value with our potential product. It gave us a framework to further structure of customer discovery and validation of the idea itself.



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Week 3 Reflection

This week we had one of the coldest days of my lifetime. We experienced the polar vortex. Temperature dropped so low that the Chancellor of the University canceled classes campus wide. Being the doers we are, the cold front didnt stop us from innovating. We held course digitally and got to get to know the creatives at Milestone Studios. They told us a bit about what they do. Each team was required to present the areas of opportunity gained from our mentors stories. Each team was given feedback and later went into an extensive  brainstorming session.

We broke into breakout sessions with the mentors we met the week prior. The task was to really hone in on the problem statements. We did this by completing the challenge sheet provided by Milestone studios. After this activity we had a clear vision of specified areas we’d like to innovate.

My team and I were very moved by Jenna’s story.  We really want our design to be driven by affordability and accessibility. We decided to move forward with the idea of designing a shoe tread that gives prosthetic users the ability to safely walk through snow, rain, and other inclimate settings. A tread for all terrain. Jenna stressed the complications of using her prosthetic even further. She was really behind our idea. The thought of a detachable thread for prothstetics could make all the difference for its users.  Our opportunity statement is: “To create detachable tread attachments that can be used to travel in a variety of terrains.” Our device won’t be limited to just snow but all inclusive for users to maneuver through sand, uneven ground, and pretty much any terrain as previously mentioned.

I personally feel that we can create rea value for people with this potential product. Nearly every single one us of have experienced the inconvenience of issues with daily mobility. We all face a multitude of difficulties that surprisingly could benefit from such a product like the one we are developing. We have to do more research on a few things, and possibly some case studies, but we are in a good place. We plan to meet and get a few concepts down on paper. We’re designing with the user in mind and at the forefront. In the weeks to come we’ll work towards having fidelity models ranging from low-high. I’m excited for the future potential applications of this device we are developing.

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Week 3 Reflection – Challenge to Make an Impact

A slide from Milestone Studios' presentation.
A slide from Milestone Studios’ presentation.

During week 3, we had an online session with Milestone Studios and our mentors to explore how to make a social impact. I was a little bit disappointed that we didn’t have the class physically, because we could have more interactions with the studio as well as our mentors if it were a face-to-face meeting. Still, I gained many insights from the class and now have a clearer view of what to do next.

We started the class by discussing unmet social needs. After seeing some examples of how people overcame those challenges, we were asked to brainstorm the problems that we had encounter in our life and how we overcame them. I was shocked by this activity. I have always considered myself to be a person who has creativity, yet during this exercise, I was unable to think of anything that fitted the criteria. I have had the cases where I identified the problems, yet the solutions that I found were usually too complicated, or I myself didn’t have the technical skill to realize them. Seeing the simple solutions in the examples, I reflected on my way of thinking. In the future, I should try harder to pinpoint the core of the problem so that I can come up with more affordable and more accessible solutions.

Another activity that led to many thoughts was writing the opportunity statement. This is related to the defining stage in the design thinking process. Two new words that I learned was analysis and synthesis. The analysis is breaking down complex problems into smaller, easier to understand pieces. The synthesis is combining small insights into whole ideas. We applied those two concepts when we created the opportunity statement. Filling in the statement, we sparked ideas that we didn’t consider before. Previously when we prepared the presentation slides, we had more plans for Ron and only a vague direction for Ryan. As we brainstormed the opportunity we could have with Ryan, we realized “improving the ability to multitask for people with limited mobility” would be an area with great potential. This idea could benefit not only people with limited mobility when they do tasks such as filming and drawing, but also the general public who may need to accomplish tasks with fewer limbs. In the class, we didn’t have the opportunity to talk with our mentor. Later, I plan to interview him in more depth. One technique that I think would be helpful is the conversation starter which we studied in the reading. I believe this would be an excellent way for us to see how our mentor reacts and we can identify more possibilities.