Guest Speaker- iVenture
To begin class this week we had a guest speaker from the University of Illinois iVenture program. The iVenture program is organized by the university to better help student with new business ideas collaborate to make them a reality. iVenture provides grants and scholarships up to $10,000 to help these projects succeed. It sounded incredibly intriguing but as I am a Senior graduation this spring it sadly doesn’t apply to me.
Meeting with Milestone Labs
Our meeting with Milestone Labs I feel as if went pretty well. We showed them our prototype ideas and testing protocol. My team, Movi, has been working a lot with Jenna in creating our prototypes. We showed them our new concept of having the guard be secured by hooks on the back and the knee pad on the front. After we walked them to our 3rd and 4th round prototypes, I walked them through our testing protocol. This was cool to walk the consultants through because they could see our high-level thought process when conducting our testing.
Project Update/Materials Selection
After our meeting with Milestone Labs, our group came together to begin the process of our mood board as well as select materials that we need for Make-a-thon. First we started working on all of our ideas to put on the mood board. Jae has always done a fantastic job showing his design skill, but now it was Nathan and mine turn to help him out. We all took about 10-20 minutes drawing prototype ideas of how we should move forward. In my design I wanted to work off of our current iterations. In my design, I added a snap hook feature as well as material ideas for the entire design.
When selecting materials it was really important for us to include everything we might need. We took our process piece by piece in our designs to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Thanks to Nathan, who met with his material science professor, we had an idea of some materials we should be looking at. For example when selecting a material for our knee pad we bough a bike helmet. Bike helmets are made of light weight high impact foam which we though would be prefect for our design. Below is a list of ideas and materials we decided to buy:
- Inner liner protection- Silicone Caulk
- Knee Pad- High impact foam (bike helmet)
- Attachment- Velcro, Metal Hooks, Small snap hooks
- Scratch Resistant- Plastic Dip/Spray (Various colors), Nylon sleeve
- Outside Hardshell- Plastic sheet (provided)
As seen from our list, we wanted to think our features we wanted and decided the materials to help us get it there. I am genuinely excited to jump into Make-a-Thon next weekend and make our officially usable prototype. Before we get there our group has a couple of task we need to get done so we can get right to making at Make-a-Thon. The first thing we want to complete is our mood board. We are collaborating by trying to make 3 designs by the end of this week each to put on the board. Secondly, we need to have scans of Jenna’s leg so we can begin working in CAD for measurements. Finally, Jae has been working with Jenna to identify stress points on her leg when she falls. These are really important for us to know when designing our prototypes so we can understand what parts of the guard we should pay more attention too.
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.
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