Prototypes Are Coming! — Erika Carbajal

Finally! We are moving into the building process! We finally got the chance to turn in our deliverable/design proposal, and if I must say, it was a document to be proud of! The team went through some conferences, some calendar planning, and more just to make sure we get our product prototype built in time!

 

After meeting with our teacher, Ms. Meisner, we came to the conclusion that we might need to rethink our design. Of course, our design is amazing, but we questioned: why pick our product over a regular product? SuperNovas concluded that we will add a heat sensor to the hard hat that will notify the person in charge of the worker that an employee has exceeded average body temperature. We also began talking about possible designs; we might just end up removing the goggles from the hard hat, since they might be a little unnecessary. We are keeping the chin straps, however, and we will be adding a retroreflective strip to each side of the hard hat.

 

We have set up a calendar to agree as to who has to turn in what on what ever date is assigned. This will help us stay organized and on time with creating our prototype. It’s very exciting! The finished product of our prototype shall be finished by the beginning of December, and we’ll be sure to share the pictures here on our blog! (Link to SuperNovas blog HERE!) It is a major project, and it’s really important to us, considering that we see a lot of accidents happen on a daily basis on construction sites, so it’s crucial for us to make changes to a hard hat that will be safer AND more effective.

 

 

Along with that, we have started OSHA training, to be allowed to create our product and go forward with marketing, without running into any legal problems. It is taking us a while to get our certification finished, but the time taken to complete the course is taking into consideration when deciding the deadlines to having a finish prototype and/or a final product.

 

Overall, we are moving forward with creating our prototype in both budgeting, and creating. With one more meeting to discuss our final steps, we should be ready to begin ordering our materials to begin building our prototype! The SuperNovas team is putting skills to great use inside team time, and outside! We can’t wait to see our finished product in the spring!