Tying it Together – Oceane Maher

This week was all about taking our idea, research and interviews and putting them all together into a memorandum. This gives us a nice visual of all of the work we’ve done so far, and it’s far more practical to have everything all in one place. In order to create our memorandum, we had to spend some time researching existing products and patents based around our idea. Though there are many similar patents/products (several people have considered the idea of interchangeable and removable heels), there were some we found to be particularly intriguing, like Nael Coce’s Eco-Friendly Stiletto High Heels which compromise of a pair of high heels with built-in ballet shoes.

We also conducted a total of nine interviews, asking women of all ages about their opinions of high heeled shoes. The general response was an appreciation towards the aesthetic look of heels, but resentment towards the physical pain of wearing them. Through our research we found that there have been attempts in making heels more comfortable, yet no breakthroughs have occurred. This motivates us to keep researching and developing new ways in which to improve high heels. A shoe so popular deserves to have a comfort level as high as its level of appearance!

We were also able to peer review other memorandums, and receive feedback for our own. This helped us anywhere from catching spelling and grammar errors to notifying us when any parts were unclear. It was also nice to review other memos, and see what other teams are putting together. Our class has a lot of potential, and some of these products look very promising.

After putting our memorandum together we were able to celebrate our official debut of our product with some carbohydrates (aka cookies and brownies).

We took some time to reflect on the work we’ve done so far, and how well our team has been collaborating. Despite a bit of procrastination, we’ve done a great job of contributing and listening to each other’s ideas, and ultimately that is what will bring us to success in this project. We all have one goal in mind: to design the best possible pair of high heels, and we will stop at nothing to reach it.