Mechanical engineering student Ryley Jones and industrial design student Rachel Barber team up to fabricate a part of their Capstone Design project using a milling machine in the Invention Studio. Jones operates the machine while Barber sprays coolant to avoid overheating during cutting.
found new ways to expand the scope of their work. Director of Design and Innovation for the School of Mechanical Engineering Amit Jariwala says that learning these lessons upfront is critical, no matter what problem the team is trying to solve. “Many times, students assume that people need ‘X,’ but what they really need is ‘Y,’” he says. “The real lesson is for students to question their own assumptions early on.” To reinforce the importance of this timeconsuming research, Jariwala brings in successful entrepreneurs to class to share how they used customer feedback to transform good ideas into great ones. At the same time, says Olufisayo Omojokun, a lecturer in the College of Computing, students must learn to suss out what’s important even if their clients can’t fully articulate their needs themselves. “In the real world,” says Omojokun, “clients don’t always have a
complete idea of what they want in the very system they desire.” The other challenge that students must tackle early on is meeting the expectations they have for themselves and for their team. To prevent the all-toocommon experience of one or two team members shouldering the load for the rest of the group, Jariwala makes all teams develop and sign a team charter. Though the charters vary by group, they all include a mission statement and the expectations that students have both of themselves and their team. Jariwala says it would be easy for faculty members to draft a universal “work contract,” but it would never be as effective as the ones students develop themselves. “We want students to succeed,” he says. “But they have to define what that means.” While each of these steps can feel time consuming when teams are eager to begin
building the projects they’ve dreamed up, taking the right steps—rather than the fastest ones—is a skill that students will take with them long after their project has wrapped up. In some cases the knowledge they gain through this early research will ultimately propel them to create their own companies to manufacture, distribute, and sell their products. That larger opportunity is why the course includes an entire class period on intellectual property and filing patents—faculty want students to have the strategies and tools that will benefit them no matter how far they want to take their projects. For now, says Heath, his team will carefully limit the scope of the project, but he sees vast potential. “Our shortterm goals remain the same,” he says. “However, if we pursue Hanon beyond the semester-long project, we will be sure to incorporate the new ideas we found through our research.” GTALUMNIMAG.COM VOLUME 90 NO.3 2014
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