For my senior capstone project, nine groupmates and I had to produce and sell 50 units of a product integrating LED technology. We had eleven weeks to design, manufacture, and sell the product. I worked as the Design Engineer for this project. 

My favorite part about my role was my ability to have a hand in the design process. We started off the quarter with some very spirited brainstorming sessions and came up with some really interesting ideas. From these ideas, we eventually landed on the LED light-up shelf. As the Design Engineer, I made multiple solidwork files and concepts of possible designs. I got inspiration from group members, current designs in the market, and my own personal style. These solidwork concepts were taken through multiple iterations until we arrived at our final design. However, our “final design” quickly became “Final Design V8'' and kept transforming through the project to fit certain needs. I had a lot of fun during this process, and I was able to make renders of a lot of different designs. I created some niche designs that, while weren’t plausible for ITP 467, were good for my design portfolio. 

A challenge I had during this process was the need for our designs to be universal. It needed to be able to fit in the “everyday house” and be easily integrated into people's homes. I think without this experience we had in ITP 467, it’s impossible to fully understand the process of bringing an idea into a tangible product. There are so many things you don’t fully consider until you’re doing it. For example, making the cut files of our shelf bracket forced us to reconsider and change certain design elements. These changes ended up making our product easily repeatable and overall better. 

Throughout the project, I was able to bring in outside passions of mine, which was really fun. I have experience with graphic design, photography, and videography. All of these skills, which aren’t typically used in ITP, suddenly became really valuable. I think everyone on the team was able to bring in something really niche and be the “expert” of something. I really enjoyed my team and loved working with them on this project. While this project was a lot of work, it was incredibly fun because of my groupmates. For the first five weeks, I felt very secure and busy within my role and knew what I was doing. Then production came along, and I was kind of thrown into the deep end. I became a “floater”, I helped where I could and went where people needed me. I gained experience with soldering and woodwork. I really appreciated this time because it allowed me to get a new perspective. I want to go into product design in the future, and I think it’s incredibly important to have a first-hand understanding of manufacturing. I think there is sometimes a disconnect between designers and manufacturers. This experience will hopefully allow me to design things that are not only aesthetically appealing but also manufacturable. 

I think something that could be worked on is communication when it comes to the delegation of tasks. I think sometimes we’d have either “too many cooks in the kitchen” or there’d be a few individuals doing a lot of work. It was also difficult because certain tasks just inherently take longer than others. I also think there were some days that were just going to be emotionally exhausting, and you just had to embrace it. An example of this was the day we had to do the concept selection; we basically spent four hours debating concepts. I think this experience was probably one of the most valuable ITP experiences at Cal Poly. I don’t think many people prior to ITP 467 have had such an extensive project with 9 people. So overall and overwhelmingly, I had a really great and informative experience.