My name is Shivani Nookala and I am from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Currently, I am interested in majoring in economics, but I am also interested in the engineering certificate program that Wellesley offers with Olin or engineering opportunities in general. My interest in engineering comes out of my interest in entrepreneurship; I want to be able to understand how I can make a product that I might dream of creating. Therefore, I decided to take this course. This course appeals to both my interest in engineering as well as my interest in the greater creativity process. I see it is heavily focused on design thinking, which is something I have had a lot of experience learning about, and I am excited to see how I can apply this to engineering, since I can see how the two topics are inherently connected.
When thinking of a product with a compelling design, I think of Apple® earbuds. These have both good and bad features. The fact that the earbud is shaped to fit better in an ear is good, and it is helpful to be able to adjust the volume from the earbuds themselves. Also, the built-in speaker makes it easy to talk to someone on the go, or to facetime someone with some more privacy while in a public place. However, like any pair of earbuds, they still get tangled, and while they fit better than most earphones because of their unique shape, they can still be uncomfortable. As a whole, I think it’s an innovative design of a pretty standard product, but there is still room for improvement, and while the new iPhone will come with wireless headphones and this certainly solves the issue of earbuds getting tangled, this also makes it inconvenient for consumers to have access to other features that wired earbuds provide, such as being able to use an auxiliary cable for connecting phone music to a car stereo system. I see that this product still has potential for improvement.