BalVest

Collaborative / interdisciplinary

Project Management / UXR / IXD / Product Design

3rd Year - DNB315 Wearable Technology

Sports related concussions go under reported and under diagnosed, potentially leading to serious health outcomes.

How might we improve the concussion identification procesS?

DNB315 Wearable Technology is a semester long, capstone style, interdisciplinary collaborative project with three assignments that build on each other.

Assignment one is a research assignment exploring and eventually defining a problem space before taking a deeper dive into researching the problem space, defining a problem and developing a design brief.

Assignment two is an interaction design prototyping assignment exploring how Arduino/electronics can be used to prototype an interaction that could be incorporated into a product.

Assignment three works through the design and prototyping stages at various levels of fidelity and putting together a project pitch.

The process for this assignment was extensive, a small selection of progress work is shown below. To see the whole process and my reflections and thoughts throughout please download my DDR (design development record). Fair warning, they’re very large files!

 Small selection of pages from design Development Record research phase

 Small selection of pages from design Development Record Design phase

This was by far the most ambitious project I’ve worked on at uni and was a truly collaborative effort. I had an amazing team with a diverse skillset in industrial design and computer sciences. The scale of this project and the level of fidelity we were working to was both challenging and rewarding as a project manager. We had moments when materials weren’t available or were faulty, competing assignments for other classes and times where our prototypes failed. But through careful planning and quick problem solving we were able to overcome them all.

I feel like I thrived on coordinating the project and being the go to person to finalise decisions and solve problems whilst also still getting to play the part of interaction designer. I played many roles in this project and learnt a bunch of new skills from my team mates, especially in the workshop. One skill I didn’t get the chance to learn but that I’d like the opportunity to learn is CAD / 3D renders.

This project really solidified my interest in product design and has highlighted for me that wearable technology is a field I want to delve into more.