This week, we looked back at all the process we have made throughout the semester and planned how to move forward.
The class on Wednesday was mainly broken down into two components. The first component was updating with the Milestones Lab. All the teams reported their progress to the Milestones Lab in team order, and Milestones provided feedback on the updates and the overall design. For groups that were not presenting at the moment, they brainstormed on the material list and resources needed for the upcoming Makeathon event.
The session with Milestones was truly insightful, and we have received much useful feedback. For instance, although we had decided the functions we wanted our design to include, we were considering too many actions that we would like our product to accomplish, and it made it hard to come up with the solution. We had some preliminary sketches, but we were not sure how to make it work physically. However, Milestones provided us with a different perspective; Milestones suggested to us that we didn’t need to consider all the actions users would involve in when they ate with the design at this point. Rather, we could focus on two main actions first and dive deep with the mechanism of the actions. This way, we could simplify our design and enable the product to accomplish the two activities perfectly before we moved forward with other functions and actions. In addition, we could take modularity into consideration. This could accommodate different utensils and shapes of hands. At the same time, it’s possible that we could add more functions and actions easier if the design includes modularity. Another idea that we didn’t consider was not to restrict the model to gloves. Previously, we used the word gloves to communicate the purpose of our product easier. As time went by, we focused on the concept of gloves and didn’t take other forms into consideration. Milestones suggested us to break the restriction and think broader. They also provided us with some pictures of existing pictures. Those helped us brainstormed better.
For the material and resources list, we came up with a preliminary list that we are going to order. It was hard for us to come up with the list because we haven’t finished stretching. We were discussing how to realize our ideas physically during the class and had some potential ways that we would explore later. However, we still need more time to finalize the actual design.
I am Huan Wu, a leadership-oriented undergraduate student studying Accountancy, Supply Chain Management and Information Systems/Information Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I chose to major in those areas because I am a person who likes to learn new knowledge continuously and take on challenges. The challenges bring me excitement, as I enjoy the feeling of using my expertise to tackle hard issues, find insights and initiate change. I believe having an understanding of different fields allows me to have a broader perspective when I look at issues in business. I aim at improving myself and learning skills to initiate change and make real impacts in the world in the future.
My LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huan-wu-0507/
Hi Huan,
Thank you for sharing the process of your brainstorming session! I like Milestone Lab’s feedback to focus on 1 or 2 elements of your product initially. It is easy to want to create something with multiple functions; however, for the purpose of this class, it makes sense to narrow our ideas down. I look forward to seeing your final prototype after the Makeathon!
Hi Huan!
I enjoy hearing and learning about your groups brainstorming session and it did some particularly more challenging compared to the other projects. We also received similar feedbacks from Milestone Labs to focus on one or two that ideas that we found to be the most feasible. I am excited for Make-a-Thon and cannot wait to see what you guys come up with.
Hello Huan,
I really enjoy reading what your group received as feedback from the Milestone Labs, and how your group approach in making changes and improvements to your project based on their feedback. It should be a process that all of us go through, making iterative improvements. I can’t wait till the Make-a-thon to see what prototypes your group can come up with.
Thanks for the updates