Product Design

Building Great Products

The image on the left is Professor Andy Davidson’s figure about how prototyping relates to everything. Prototyping is essential to great product design, whether it’s hardware or software. While most of my coursework and many projects I’ve worked on have been in software, I also have a deep interest and strong love for hardware. My first interest in tech was borne out of being on a robotics team and reading Don Norman’s Emotional Design, so I’ve always had a predilection towards physical objects.

Whether it’s for a website, user interface, robot, or physical device, many of the same principles apply. I try to use the same process for all: Research, Ideation, Prototyping, Testing, Iteration, and Final design. I’d like to continue learning to develop this process with more complex products and devices.

Creating Physical Devices

My main example for this is the capstone project we worked on a few years prior. My nickname in the group was “Fab Queen” for Fabrication Queen. I taught Mill With Jill Courses and was 3D printing everything I could. As I continued this process in prototyping courses, I found myself daydreaming of new ideas, imagining what to create next. I’m waiting to buy a 3D printer so I can make those dreams a reality,

Below is the final poster for our Patient Controlled Analgesia device, where we developed both the internal mechanism, external device, screen and overall user flow. Initially, I’d create designs rather haphazardly due to my excitement to print, but making these was time consuming and inefficient. For example, when I first made the wheel, I manually created each separating section so we could test a variety of sizes and angles, but once we had final dimensions ensuring the symmetry difficult, so we switched to creating pieces and duplicating them to ensure that everything was even in Fusion 360. I learned a lot about CAD in this process, and hope to build and experiment more while working in Rhino and other software. An example of the wheel along with some potential holders is located to the right.