Wear’s the Technology?
Wearable technology!Copyright 2015 Unsplash, Pixabay, CC0 (public domain) https://pixabay.com/en/smartwatch-gadget-technology-smart-828786/
Students apply their knowledge of scale and geometry to design wearables that would help people in their daily lives, perhaps for medical reasons or convenience. Like engineers, student teams follow the steps of the design process, to research the wearable technology field (watching online videos and conducting online research), brainstorm a need that supports some aspect of human life, imagine their own unique designs, and then sketch prototypes (using Paint®). They compare the drawn prototype size to its intended real-life, manufactured size, determining estimated length and width dimensions, determining the scale factor, and the resulting difference in areas. After considering real-world safety concerns relevant to wearables (news article) and getting preliminary user feedback (peer critique), they adjust their drawn designs for improvement. To conclude, they recap their work in short class presentations.
Transforming core technology in the areas of sensors, processing and communication into wearable devices is a hot engineering trend. Engineers design wearables to help solve many problems and make other products and technologies more economical, capable, compact and practical. Examples of wearable technology are Apple’s Watch, which provides smartphone capabilities (and more), and Fitbit’s wearable bracelet, which monitors physical activity. Other creative wearables are focused on medical products that embed sensors in fabric-like patches to monitor blood, wounds and collect other physiological data. Other more fashion-concerned wearables provide smartphone and communications capabilities into accessories like rings and eyeglasses. Wearable technology is advancing every year, and like the development of all sorts of products, engineers follow the steps of the engineering design process to invent new and better wearables that have the potential to impact all areas of our lives.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Research and solve a real-world problem by designing a 2D or 3D wearable.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the steps of the engineering design process