What We Do Best
Our approach is to give students tools to generate ideas, develop their ideas into products, develop prototypes and help them find sponsors to make their ideas a reality. If you want to learn more about what we offer and how we can help design a product or service, you’re in the right place. Read to learn about the modules our students go through .
Product Design Mentorship
Product design is the process of identifying a market opportunity, clearly defining the problem, developing a proper solution for that problem and validating the solution with real users. We take students through the process of how to identify a need, generate concepts, select the most promising concept, and break down a complex design into smaller manageable components. Using low cost technology prototypes are produced to prove the concept functionality. Prototypes are pitched to potential sponsors and investors to make the product a reality.
IOT
Internet of Things (IOT) refers to the connection of billions of physical devices around the world which collect and share data. This is the backbone of the Industry 4.0 era. With the rolling out of 5G networks worldwide there has never been the right time to focus and implement IOT as now. Complicated as it might seem to be, we specialize in making IOT to be a reality using low cost and easy to learn and use technologies. We use low cost controllers and processors like the Arduino, ESP8266, NodeMCU, ESP35, ESP CAM, Web Servers, MQTT, Raspberry Pi e.t.c. to make this a reality. Our focus is not just to learn how to program the devices but to produce products from the acquired knowledge.
Web and Software Design
IOT and Industry 4.0 require physical devises to the able to collect, process, share and display information across different platforms. In order to achieve this there needs to be supporting software. With the internet being one of the mostly used cross platform, websites have been widely use used to input, control and display information. We expose students in different web development platforms which do not require computer programming or science background. Students are also taught basic software development skills they can use to control their products. They are also taught mobile app development .
WE ALSO TEACH THE FOLLOWING
Arduino Programming
Arduino is one of the most popular microcontrollers and can be programmed by people as young as high school going age. With an Arduino projects like home automation and building robots can be done with ease.
PLC Programming
A programmable logic controller (PLC) is an industrial digital computer which has been ruggedized and adapted for the control of manufacturing processes, such as assembly lines, or robotic devices, or any activity that requires high reliability, ease of programming and process fault diagnosis. PLCs can range from small modular devices with tens of inputs and outputs (I/O), in a housing integral with the processor, to large rack-mounted modular devices with a count of thousands of I/O, and which are often networked to other PLC and SCADA systems.
Critical Design Thinking
Designers should be able to anticipate product trends and customer needs. Product designers should rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting the status quo. They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings represent the entire picture and are open to negative outcomes.
Web Development
Web development refers to building, creating, and an maintaining websites. It includes aspects such as web design, web publishing, web programming, and database management.
Financial Management
Designing a product or service is a financial investment. A designer should be able to plan, organize, direct and control the financial activities such as procurement and utilization of funds during the development of the product. This requires applying general management principles to financial resources during this period. The goal is to get the product into the market at an optimized cost.
Raspberry Pi Programming
Raspberry Pi is a low cost tiny, microprocessor that can be used as a desktop computer. It can be used to develop robot, smart home hubs, media centers, networked AI core, as a factory controller, and much more.
Systems Engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. It produces a combination of components that work in synergy to collectively perform a useful function. Complex design and systems are broken down into smaller easier and manageable subsystems.
Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is a process that defines the manner in which people think about, assess, view, and create the future for themselves and others. Where there is volatility, there is also opportunity and product designers who can identify and leverage such opportunities will prosper
Software Development
Most of the products are now controlled by a computer. The trend is that maintanance of new products will be more of software maintenance than hardware maintenance. Software development is a process of writing and maintaining the source code and also includes all that is involved between the conception of the desired software through to the final manifestation of the software, sometimes in a planned and structured process.
Marketing
Marketing is the process of understanding your customers, and building and maintaining relationships with them. A product designer should understand the needs of his customers develop the correct product the customer wants and offer the product to the customer at terms favourable to the customer. Wit the customers being advanced and having many options to buy from gone are the days where products were just manufactured without considering the customer requirements.