This was a project for my engineering writing course. We were required to form groups of four engineering students and come up with an original product that would benefit the world in some way. The main goal of the course was to create a proposal for our idea that included product design, materials research, cost evaluations, a marketing plan, and an assessment of potential health risks. Along with the written proposal, we were required to give an oral presentation about our product that would go over all of the aspects covered in the proposal.
My group and I decided to propose an improved football helmet that would reduce the amount of concussions in football games. We designed the helmet to have a flexible yet protective outer shell that would reduce the amount of impulse that a player's head experiences in head-to-head collision. We also devised a system that would create a magnetic field to repel two helmets away from each other and further reduce the acceleration that a player's head undergoes in a collision.
This project was mainly centered around the idea of producing a well written proposal and a good presentation. There wasn't much emphasis on the technical aspects of our concept which allowed us to focus on writing more than detailed engineering.
I gained a lot of valuable experience from this project. Mainly an ability to write clearly and efficiently in a technical environment and communicate effectively between team members and to an audience. I also gained solid leadership experience by taking on the role of team leader by coordinating team meetings, delegating specific portions of the proposal to other team members, and finalizing the content and formatting of our proposal before submission.
