Let's Innovate

Founder and President of Merrimack College's First and Only Product Innovation Club
2022 - Present
How it Started
Prior to college I gained impactful design experience from my time spent on the FIRST Robotics Team, The Western Mass 3d Printing Collective, and my passion for creating 3D art. Unfortunately, there were no opportunities for students at Merrimack to develop our design skills until senior year, and I knew first hand how vital of a learning opportunity it is to take an idea from concept to fabrication.

Thus, I took it upon myself to solve this structural problem by creating a new student led organization called “Let’s Innovate.”
What is Let's Innovate
“Let's Innovate” has become Merrimack College's premier product innovation club and in 2022 received the top leadership award for all clubs at the college. I, along with my fellow club officers, created a safe environment for students’ imaginations to run wild and create new products by applying engineering principles and learning through failures.  All successful designs first come from failed prototypes and, most importantly, the best learning is also achieved through this process of iteration. Because most students have little to no design experience my board and I became the teachers, and we guided our group through the design process and fueling their excitement for engineering creativity and of course for innovation.
Design Meeting for the Assistive Tray Attachment (A.T.A)
Design Meeting for the Assistive Tray Attachment (A.T.A)

Here's What We have accomplished:

Let's Innovate
Founder and President
April 2022 - Present

Fall Semester 2022:
Workshops:
Understanding that our peers had limited knowledge of the design process Let's Innovate geared our meetings assuming any student joining knew nothing. Therefore, in order to create a foundation of knowledge to build off of, the board and I  broke down what we believed were the basics to any design process and created workshops for each.
1. Brainstorming (Every designed solution begins with new ideas)
               Groups were given a novel objective/problem, such as creating a new feminine product                dispenser. Each group was guided through the brainstorming process and then tasked                 with presenting their ideas.
2. CAD (Drawing or 3D modeling the designed product is an essential engineering skill)
               We taught club members Autodesk Inventor, following which they were tasked with                creating a 3D model of a GoPro mount from an engineering schematic.
3. Prototyping (Fabrication requires initial testing)
‍               Using only cardboard and duct tape, students learned how to build and test basic               prototypes of their product ideas.
             
Let’s Innovate’s first major challenge:  The RC Car Conversion Competition
‍Objective: Convert a typical RC (Remote Control) Automobile into an aquatic vehicle that could float, steer, and move forward and reverse. This first project served many purposes for our club: First, it helped to gauge our member's design competencies and identify the support needs required. Secondly, it offered a start to finish from design to fabrication and to a testable end goal acquisition (competition). Lastly and most importantly, this project allowed the board and I to work out a managerial system of how to run an organization.

 Overall, this project was a success and allowed Let's Innovate to better understand what we were capable of - great things.
The RC Boat Conversion Competition Group
*From left to right*
Concept presentation for feminine product dispenser
The executive board RC boat conversation  competition
An entry into the RC boat conversation competition
Concept presentation for feminine product dispenser
Awards
For our efforts in impacting the Merrimack Community, maintaining clear communication with the school administration among other accomplishments Let's Innovate was awarded Student Organization of the Year.


Spring Semester 2022:
Nathan's Tray or (A.T.A):
By a chance encounter in the Merrimack dining hall I met Nathan. Nathan lives with a degenerative genetic disorder that requires him to use a posture walker. As with any walker it requires the use of both hands, and consequently this impairs Nathan’s ability to independently get his own food without asking for help. Hearing of this significant accessibility problem for Nathan, we at Let's Innovate designed, created, tested, and provided to Nathan a tailor-made Assistive Tray Attachment or A.T.A.  This new tray attachment allowed Nathan for the first time in his college career to independently get the food he wanted!
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This project gave our members the experience of working with a client, moving toward a common goal with a team of 12-15 people, and truly experiencing joy of applying engineering to help improve the life of someone in our community.  This outcome solidified Let's Innovate as a capable product innovation club.
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Installation of A.T.A
The A.T.A in Action

What's Next ?

With the huge success of our first year the board and I wanted to go bigger, make a larger impact. We wanted to push ourselves and our members to achieve more, and what better way to do that than to host Merrimack College's first ever design competition "Mack Attack" (kind of like shark tank). This competition enables students to create their own project and get the chance to lead their own groups. First pitching their idea to a group of mentors from various industries. These mentors over the course of the spring semester will help develop and market the product beyond what I or any of the other Executive board members are able to do. Finally, after a second semester of development the groups will pitch their idea again to a panel of Judges who will decide on the final winner.

As of right now we have four different projects of similar scale to A.T.A being worked on. This very well may fail as no one at Merrimack College has done this before, but innovation does not happen without a bit of failure. So Stay tuned and follow @mcletsinnovate to follow each groups progress.

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