It’s a new semester and I have started a new project too!
As many of you have read in the previous blog posts, many of the groups have disbanded in hopes of pursuing a new project of interest. Even with the outline of our flotation device, Guppies Group Inc. made the decision to disband and set the project idea aside due to complications. For now I have joined a new group which consist of my new team members, Trinh, Annalise and Jada and we have planned to make a phone charging station for student usage in the classroom.
As part of our new school policy of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), many students have taken part by bringing and using their electronic devices during school. With constant usage throughout the day, a student’s phone will become low on battery thus making it hard to contact parents when the student is staying after school or hanging with friends. By making a phone charging station for the teacher’s classroom, students could have the capability to charge their own devices during class in order to recharge the battery. Plugged In has done some research on phone charging station the past couple of weeks and have come across some interesting ones such as the CS6 Android and iPhone phone charger and much more products through the completion of the competitive analysis.
A competitive analysis is a document that is utilized by business that give a comparison of your competitor’s products with the listing of pros and cons for their respective products. With a written list of pros and cons then you are able to make a consensus of what you want your own product to have in order to make it the better product out of the others. With the completion of our competitive analysis, sketches and survey result from our lovely teachers, Plugged In plans to move forward with our design and will hopefully begin to build our phone charging station, once the list of materials has been made.
Personally I feel that the do ability of this project is more practical then what was going to be made before hand with my previous group memebers. With an easier project idea in mind, the chances of having a product to show and feature in the Make-O-Rama fair is more probable. Before I end this blog post, I do have a few question for anyone reading this post:
- What do you think would be a good material to make our prototype out of?
- How can we get students aware of our project?
- Should our phone charging station be open to using any phone cord through USB or should there be given set of chargers?
Photo credits:
http://www.amazon.com/Charging-Organizer-Smartphones-Universal-Compatibility/dp/B009CFMO0S
StarPathDesign 
Hi there Toni,
I really like and appreciate this idea, because on many occasions my phone has died and I can’t contact my mother. I really like the photo you posted, I’m a sucker for a good wood varnish. But, all together I feel it would be awesome to incorporate both the USB outlets, as well as having cords there for the most popular phone types. You can decide the option of phone chargers provided, based on a survey, or something. — Stormy