portico

The New Venture

"Briefing"

         The proposed project will involve students in a one-year venture working on a design challenge with support from various courses. In the first semester students take either Design Thinking, a new course that teaches human-centered-design with a project based learning approach, or Consumer Behavior, a course that teaches students about the different factors that influence consumer behavior and decision process. Each E-team will have members in at least one of the courses, as both courses will help teams work in their design challenge by conducting market research and extensive user observations. Subsequently, E-teams will present to both course instructors their identified opportunity areas (problems). After these are approved they can start to propose ideas (solutions) to prototype. In this stage, students will interact with the campus Makerspace and Patent & IP office. At the end of the first semesters each E-team will present their prototypes in a design review in which a panel of judges will decide if the team should continue to develop the product. In the second semester, the E-team members will enroll in capstone, Technology-Based Entrepreneurship, or Interdisciplinary product development course. The cap- stone course exists in all engineering disciplines on campus, in this course students work on real life problems. The Technology-Based Entrepreneurship is a business course that focus in writing a business plan for technology-based ventures. Finally, the course Interdisciplinary Product Development will be developed as a course similar to capstone, with the interdisciplinary element that students of all faculties can enroll. At the end of the one-year experience E-teams will have the opportunity to continue working at Vitec, an off-campus incubator.