Opportunities – iVenture Acceleration
This week, the class begins with a guest speaker who came in to talk to us about the iVenture Acceleration program. The program sounds very cool to me. I think the program is very interesting in a way that it supports student startups not only through providing investment capital but also training courses for student startups to learn about how to manage and gather funding as well as expanding the network that students can reach, which I think is the most important for any startups. Without network and opportunities, it is really hard to be successful. I think the program is very interesting. If I do not have an internship during the summer, I would definitely consider this opportunity. However, I am still not sure whether I would be able to get an internship or not by this point yet, so it is really hard for me to make a decision at this point on whether I should find a team and apply for this great opportunity.
Product Design
After listening to the guest speaker’s section, we went on to team discussion about our project and reported our project update to Milestone Labs. From the conversation, we understand the weakness of our team makeup. The fact that we don’t have any design students in our team makes the product design stage more difficult than expected. When we are trying to express our ideas in design, it is hard for us to sketch out the idea and communicate it accurately to the audience.
Due to this weakness, we consulted with the Maker Lab Guru, William, on Friday. With his help, we were able to figure out ways to improve our design of the product. He also helped us to sketch out the shape and design that we might be interested in exploring further on for our prototype.
As the Make-a-thon is coming up in one week, our team needs to get at least the 3D modeling done before the Make-a-thon to be able to keep on track, especially when during the first half of the Make-a-thon, I would be the only one who is at the Make-a-thon. Therefore, it is crucial for us to get things done as early as possible.
I am a student who’s currently studying accountancy and management of information systems. I am graduating this year and entering the MAS program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I love programming and accountancy as much as I love taking photographs and learning how to play the Rubik’s cube. I love trying out new things and learning new skills. Learning how to make accessible designs utilizing digital making skills is one of the new skills I learned.
Hi Yingyi,
I’m sorry to hear how your team doesn’t have any design students. I also struggle with sketching. Personally, I think it helps to look up similar products and then model your design sketches off of those. I also think the 3D model will help your team a lot! I think another resource could be looking through Thingiverse to see what other people have designed! This could help your team to visualize what shape you need better.
Hi Yingyi, I like how your group overcomes the difficulties you are facing by finding helpful resources. I feel the same way in terms of the design. More precisely, our group is not sure how to realize the design physically because we don’t know enough about mechanisms. After reading your post, I think our group should actively find resources that could help us mitigate the weakness.