After initiating the business plan and learning about user experience, the participants of the Academic Working Capital program dedicated their time to the new prototypes of their products in the third day of Workshop I, held on July 15th. The Design Thinking concept was taken up in the lecture by Eduardo Zancul, professor of the Production Engineering program and director of the multidisciplinary laboratory InovaLab at the University of São Paulo (USP).
The professor presented the history and characteristics of the method, which he met at a program at Stanford University (United States). This experience led him to create the Integrated Products Development course, involving students from different USP programs to develop solutions through Design Thinking. He stressed the importance of prototyping and showed the three types of prototypes created in this process. “The prototype should allow user experience, showing the values that will be in the final product,” he explained.
The AWC participants had as a challenge to think of the first type of prototype mentioned by the professor, the one for critical function, focused on the main functions of the product. They also used the activities developed in the previous days to structure a Business Model Canvas, which is like a map divided into blocks with key project elements (partners, activities, resources, customers etc.). For this, the students had to relate the quality attributes with product engineering attributes.
The afternoon was devoted entirely to the creation of prototypes. The teams worked hard to think of the best proposal based on the business model developed. Some participants also took the opportunity to visit the InovaLab facilities. Along with the advisers, professor Marcos Barretto guided and participated in the exchange of ideas between the groups. The initial prototypes were presented as designs or templates created on the computer. Marcos and the advisers also guided the teams presentations in the Review of Products Fair, which takes place on the last day of the workshop.
