Developing an innovation to solve an existing problem
STEM 382, Industrial Design, was a course that was very open to interpretation. When I started the course I was wondering exactly where it was going as we were drawing various images, including drawing what we drew with our right hand, with our left hand. Even when we got to the final project I was still confused as to what I was going to make functional out of a foldable object, however origami always interested me.
In 2nd grade I remember my teacher Mrs. Hagert introduced me to it. From then I had a longing to learn and create various shapes for entertainment, although I didn’t succeed much further past an origami fortune teller. Finally, I was able to apply a purpose to what she taught me years later.
As I searched for projects to satisfy the course, I fell most amused to the battery operated, origami lamp. The market was essentially flat. The closest item to it that I could find was a dinosaur or a pendant that has to plug in. In times like today, it is important to be versatile. A battery operated object can be taken or placed anywhere, regardless of source of power.
Above is my take, parts laid out, of a battery operated lamp. I found that this could be a great product to market, given the lack of other products and also the low cost it would take to make. Although, I am not willing to start this business venture now, I am seriously considered it as a part of a business in the future. I would need to fine tune the quality of the parts and manufacturing processes, but this seems to be an opportunity awaiting!
One of the skills that I developed taking this course was making decisions and solving problems. The biggest decision I had to make was starting from scratch with no idea on what I was going to do. After spending a few hours not finding anything of interest, I made a definitive decision to go with the lamp idea. The biggest problem of that I had to solve was the energy source as my original idea was to create a self powered lamp using magnets and wire coils to create a magnetic field. After several days of trying different magnets and ways of coiling it wasn’t working and I had to switch to battery.
This experience relates to my future goals as I would like to open up my own art studio one day and has given me the courage to try something out that I wouldn’t have normally chosen to make. It also taught me that it is fairly cheap to make simple products that there isn’t many other competitors to compete against.