I worked within a team of five diverse students for four weeks to design, prototype, test, and present an original product that solves an important problem while using circular design. We developed a unique sound panel that improves classroom acoustics to help student hear professors more clearly.

My team generated the starting topic: problems in classrooms. We interviewed two students and three university professors to understand their insights about our area of study. We found that students and professors often have trouble hearing each other speak. My team used a why ladder to find the root causes of the problem. After identifying which root cause that we wanted to address, we brainstormed solutions and used a decision matrix followed by a house of quality to develop and fabricate an initial design. We tested our prototype with other students to receive feedback that we incorporated into our final design.

There are many other acoustic panels being sold to schools for classroom use. We decided that it was important to focus on maximizing features to make our product stand-out from this competition. We also decided to use recyclable and biodegradable materials in the final design to improve our products sustainability.

While working on this project, I practiced using and learned how to apply many product development tools/techniques including Gantt chart, interviewing, why ladder, decision matrix, house of quality, Autodesk Inventor, prototyping, market analysis, and break-even analysis.

The most difficult part of this project was ideation. I found it challenging to generate an idea and then reserve solution brainstorming until we had interviewed our intended users. We gathered multiple insights from interviewing that were critical in our final design that I would not have considered if we hadn’t conducted interviews. I now recognize how valuable this skill is and I will continue to work on improving it.

Our group was composed of two engineering students, two business students, and one computer science student. As an engineer, I was often too focused on making our idea work to stop and consider the business-model implications of our design changes. The two business students in our group helped me identify all the potential ripple-effects from my engineering changes. Being in a group of students with very diverse areas of study made me realize how important different viewpoints are during the product development process.