After two long weeks of finalizing our design ideas, we are finally past the stage of writing the design proposal/deliverable. Writing the proposal was much more difficult and challenging compared to writing the memorandum. The reasons for this were that in the proposal we had to decide on the design that we will make a prototype after. We were quite successful however after being done with writing the paper we realized that we needed to work on several things before we could move on to building the actual prototype.
Our team’s original plan was to create a blanket that had a heart rate monitor incorporated in it, with the goal to help reduce and prevent SIDS, however what we had envisioned changed once we were done writing the proposal. After conducting a great amount of research, our team came to the conclusion that our design’s purpose was not to prevent SIDS nor to reduce it, but instead to reduce and prevent asphyxia (suffocation).
There were certain regulations that the FDA (U.S Food and Drug Administration) had set on “SID related products”, and this is why we decided to make some changes to our design.
Another contributing factor that helped us out with looking back at our proposed design was Ms.Miesner’s feedback. The feedback that Ms. Miesner gave us was really helpful. She pointed out how our design idea was lacking details and it was not specific enough; we hadn’t set measurements for the blanket nor for the straps that were going to be attached to the blanket. We also weren’t specific enough on how the heart rate monitor was going to work, and that was because we weren’t quite sure how it was going to either. The feedback also made us reflect on our design and how we envisioned it to look and how it should work. Not all of the team members of Hestia are in the same boat. We had different ideas and that was noticeable when we began to write our proposal. We had different designs for the heart rate monitor and for the blanket.
Before moving on we have to do some more research even though we have already completed a lot. Researching is just a part of the process, and we will have to continue to research, in order for our design to be successful. We also need to come to an agreement on what the design will be, we need to decide what materials we’re going to use, and we have to set dimensions for every component will be included in our prototype.
In order for us to keep ourselves on task, Georgia came up with the following schedule. Below you can all find what our schedule will look like for the remaining month of November and December.
This is not a set calendar meaning that some changes might be made as we move through this project.
It’s been around two months since we started to work on this project and we are moving in the right direction. We have come across a few obstacles, but we have learned how to deal with them. I am so excited to keep going on with this project and can’t wait for what the outcome will be.
StarPathDesign 
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