MIT's Product Design Lab: A Classroom Corporation

Grueling Program Leads To Array of Successful Products

Most college courses come with a professor. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology?s senior-level Product Design Processes course (2.009), on the other hand, has a Chief Executive Officer (CEO)?at least that?s how ME professor David Wallace describes his role as lead instructor of the class he structures as a mock company.

To complete the corporate picture, 2.009 also features investors (corporate and foundation sponsors), consultants (alumni mentors), and product development teams (students), all in an effort to give students a realistic and inspiring introduction to the world of product design.

Because the course runs only ten weeks, the process is somewhat compressed, yet teams are still expected to conceive a marketable product and bring it to the prototype phase. Four factors help the teams achieve this: a $6,000 budget per team; a wealth of support from professors, alumni, and lab technicians; a team size of 12 to 20; and, perhaps most important, an incredible level of student dedication.

Russ Spieler, a civil engineering major and ME minor, put so much energy into his team?s project that during the semester he contemplated more than once, ?If I were an employee at company 2.009, then I probably would have quit.? Not that Spieler was dissatisfied with the course. Quite the contrary, he says. ?I?m very happy with what happened, but at the end of the course I was exhausted. I wouldn?t have been able to do it for another three weeks.?

His experience is not unique. According another class participant, Emily Warmann, the hardest part of completing the project was, well, ?completing the project...It was definitely my most demanding class, but it was worth it.?

One of the course?s least expected difficulties arose from the level of communication and coordination required to successfully self-manage a team of 20 engineering students. ?The notion,? says CEO Wallace, ?is that students have to address those issues in a pretty thoughtful way in order to have their team work effectively.?

This year company 2.009 was interested in bringing portable, battery-powered products for use outdoors to market. Each of the six teams tackled a different market niche, ranging from rescue equipment to infant care to recreation. Following is a description of each of the team?s projects.

Recreation: Tee Time for Golfers

Those who contend that golf is a strenuous game have one less argument thanks to the Golf Teer, a battery-powered device that tees golf balls as fast as a user practicing her swing can hit them. At the touch of a button, this green translucent box, roughly the size of a large home-humidifying unit, extends an arm which guides a ball to the top of a rubber tee. On its automatic setting, the Golf Teer eliminates even the strain of pressing a button; a sensor at the bottom of the tee detects light when the ball has been hit, signaling the unit to send another ball from the hopper.

?You can hit a whole round of golf balls and never touch anything,? says ASME student section president Jim Anderson.

The team originally intended to target wealthy golf enthusiasts, but with overwhelmingly positive responses from golfers during field tests and an estimated price tag of $350, team members think their device will be of interest to driving ranges as well. They are one of two teams examining the feasibility of patenting their design, and will be displaying the Golf Teer at a collegiate fair at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. this spring.

Infant Care: SafeRide

?It?s hard to borrow babies when you?re just a bunch of college students,? says Emily Warmann, speaking of the only ingredient to elude her team as they designed, built, and tested SafeRide, a baby walker that automatically pivots children away from dangerous areas such as stairs, swimming pools, and fireplaces.

SafeRide lets adults define a safe boundary for a child in a walker by laying a large loop of wire on the floor of a room, patio, or other area. Once the walker is placed inside this loop, any attempt to cross the wire boundary is detected by electrical sensors at each corner of the walker. The activated sensor then brakes the wheel furthest from the boundary. Not only does this prevent the baby from scooting beyond the designated area, it also pivots the walker back toward the center of the safe area.

Although the team hit up professors for young test subjects, they never did find an ideal candidate?between 6 and 12 months old ?leaving the team to wonder how the product?s end-user might react to SafeRide?s primary feature: being redirected from an intended goal. ?We could demonstrate that our technology worked, but we couldn?t demonstrate if it would work for a baby,? says Warmann.

Any shortcomings in the toddler department, however, were more than made up for by the team?s hard work. ?By the very end,? says Warmann, ?none of us were sleeping at all.? During the final crunch, one team member was even found sleeping at a computer terminal, hands still on the keyboard.

Rescue Equipment: Blue Lightning

The Blue Team, with only a dozen students, found their position as the smallest team in the course both advantageous and challenging. During the creation of Blue Lightning?an emergency transport stretcher equipped with two new features, a system to automatically retract the stretcher?s legs, and straps that adjust to fit both adults and children?they found that their smaller numbers reduced the organizational travails of group management, while at the same time placing a larger burden on individual team members.

In the end, this crew put in the long hours necessary to see their project succeed, and it paid off, says team member Pedro Tribin. ?The day of the final presentation it was rewarding to see the people on our team very happy because we had put a lot of work into the project and we got something good out of it,? he says.

Local emergency medical rescue teams who mock-tested the final prototype were also excited about the device because, using the potential energy of a coiled bungee cord, it eliminates the awkward task of bending down to manually fold the legs of a stretcher to be slid into an ambulance. A set of adjustable straps also increases the stretcher?s utility, allowing both children and adults to be safely secured. Current stretcher straps are too loose for use with children.

Hauling: The Incredible Hulk

There?s nothing green or scary about the Incredible Haulk, a motorized bicycle trailer that carries loads of up to 100 pounds without requiring any extra effort on the part of the cyclist. The critical module in this project is a sensor that monitors the force between bicycle and trailer, and sends an appropriate voltage to the motor controller in an attempt to keep the force equal to zero at all times. In this way, an ordinary cyclist could tow a full load of widgets up a San Francisco hillside without even knowing it.

During design, the team?s major worry was that the trailer would jerk incessantly in response to the motor?s continuous adjustments in torque output. This jolting, it was imagined, would trouble the cyclist plenty, let alone any young passengers in the trailer. Through careful attention to the linkage between bicycle and trailer, the team avoided this pitfall, only to discover a similarly troublesome feature at the end of the term, namely the trailer?s tendency to push the bicycle to one side or another if the trailer?s direction of travel strayed from that of the bicycle, as would happen after a turn.

?I was a little disappointed that it wasn?t as perfect as I would have liked,? says team member Russ Spieler, ?but it did work and it did do what we said it would do. That was very satisfying.?

Sports: Fielders Choice

The first time this team tested their baseball field-training device?which can shoot balls at a variety of speeds and angles, from ground balls to pop flies?they had to double-check that there were no people at the far end of the field. ?We were like, ?How far is this thing going to go, and are there people around??? says team member Abby Willets. They quickly discovered that the machine?s top speed, 70 mph, could send a baseball nearly 200 feet.

Initially conceived as something to play catch with when a kid doesn?t have any friends handy, the Fielder?s Choice eventually became a device better suited for college and professional sports teams.

When you throw a ball at Fielder?s Choice, a large net funnels the ball down towards a scaled-down version of a standard double-flywheel pitching device which then shoots the ball back out at a previously set angle and velocity. Unlike conventional pitching devices, however, the Fielder?s Choice is ideal for both pitching and fielding practice. It lets any player practice by himself, and also frees up coaches to spend more time coaching, and less time hitting ground balls.

?It came out way better than we could have ever expected,? says Willets. As a result the team hopes to pursue a patent and to eventually sell the technology to a company that makes pitching devices.

Photo by: Donna Coveney

Materials Handling: Laddy

Ever work on a ladder and been frustrated by having to make multiple trips up and down for tools, paint, or other equipment? Then the Laddy might be for you. This portable device is part ladder, part materials lift, part hand truck?wrapped into a single package.

Laddy?s central feature is a lead, screw- driven platform capable of lifting 200-pound loads to a height of four feet. Set up as a five-foot ladder, the Laddy can raise loads to within reach of its user. As a hand truck, the foot can be raised and lowered to help transfer heavy loads from a delivery truck or loading dock.

Although the team originally envisioned the Laddy for commercial use?parcel delivery, vending machine service, and the like?they now see potential for a homeowner-friendly version. In fact, the Laddy made its public debut in the parking lot of a Home Depot, where the team let customers try out this quirky contraption. ?People thought it was a pretty good idea,? says Heather Marshall, an ME senior on the team. 
 
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