Determining a good problem to tackle

during this session, the team came up with a large list of problems to tackle for 30 minutes. These were then split into the following categories: consumer/personal, industry, societal/environmental, and entertainment related problems. The list can be seen below:

• Mobility Challenges

  • wheelchair ramp too steep

  • wheelchairs getting stuck in potholes or slipping off the curb

• Activate Gaming

  • lack of active entertainment for adults

• Shrink Wrapping Books Takes Time

• Making Nice Chess Pieces (Particularly Knights) is Hard/Expensive

• Driving Safety (Specifically at Roundabouts)

• Traffic

• Handwriting Takes Too Long

• Hand Sanitizer Bottles Aren't Good

• Prototyping is Time Consuming

  • Sheet Metal Bending

  • PCB Fab Times

  • Faster Rapid Prototyping

• Environmental

  • E-waste

  • food waste

  • garbage sorting

  • filament recycling

  • clothing recycling

• Listing Items Online takes time

• Sports Ball Retrieval

• Gardening/Farming

  • Squirrels eating plants

  • harvesting plants takes time

  • weeds

• Art/Entertainment

• Too Much Screen Time

• Diet Improvements

  • parents can be too busy to make good meals, and may opt for less healthy frozen meals for kids

• Babies Cry A Lot

• Music Equipment is Expensive

• STEM Education

• Accessible Gaming Controllers

Top Problem Picks

After individually ranking the list of problems seen above, the following 5 problems were chosen and further analyzed:

1. Activate gaming entertainment

2. Ping pong ball collector

3. Device to tackle algae blooms

4. Preventing squirrels from eating garden plants

5. Wheelchair that avoids curbs and potholes

After considering our previous goals and requirements, the wheelchair idea was ruled out because it would likely require extensive AI knowledge and have a higher budget. The gardening idea was ruled out because the project would primarily take place over winter, preventing us from thoroughly testing in a real garden. The algal bloom idea was very interesting to many of our group members, however after consulting some stakeholders, we determined that it would be difficult to create something that other companies hadn't already done. That left the first 2 ideas to consider more carefully.

We reached out to a local ping pong club, and their current solution was to use butterfly nets to catch stray balls. They indicated that they would benefit from some sort of automated ball gatherer. We determined that there was no commercially available product that could do this, so the need was there.

For the activate idea, we reached out to the potential sponsor, and they showed interest in our group designing a new gaming room prototype. This also piqued our group's interest, because it would give us large design freedom, increase our project budget with the help of a sponsor, and create an engaging demo.

Ultimately we chose to move forward with the activate gaming room problem, because it was most interesting to all the group members, and met all the goals listed in a previous meeting.