The Knee Team-Keira Neal

As of today my group is finally at the point where we our putting everything together. What I mean by everything is our prototype, because the last couple of classes, things were kind of everywhere and it was hard for us to focus on one thing. I think that our biggest problem as a group is organization, we have way to many Google Docs to count, that have random information on them. At this point in the process we have gathered information regarding materials, marketing, data test values, amounts to other things. We are now on our third and hopefully last prototype this one should be different and better because we have gathered different data directed towards flexion and rotation values to prevent knee injuries.We hope we can start heading towards our last prototype before our final design.

 At first we were planning to do 3D printing to create support systems to prevent rotation in the knees represented by spoons. But as we put more thought into our product  we decided that it would be better to research one aspect of our design really well rather than have multiple components that are poorly supported by fact.After our visits from Grit and Bullet we were able to learn that most roller derby players are worried about force of impact rather than rotation issues.

 As a group we have decided to split the group between a few categories that include marketing, data test values, materials, research an working on the prototype. There is always something to be learned. In our marketing compilation we have successfully established a name and colors for our product, our slogan, target audience, customer needs and important statistics, We even plan to include relevant personal stories from customer interviews and different types of diagrams.For our data test values we have decided that once we have updated our prototype we will test the skin surface temperature of the knee under the knee brace during exercise, the maximum range of motion for knee extension, and how much force can be acted on the knee.  We have done prior research so our main goal is to determine whether or not our knee brace is effective.

There are not many knee protection devices on the market. So our device is very much needed. We are going to try and make sure that our device is useful to all derby players. Overall I think we will be very successful.