Synchronizing our schedules as a group was one of the biggest inhibitors to productive and creative collaboration, as it was difficult to coordinate more than one formal meeting per week. The solution was Google Documents.
Google Documents has been an incredible tool that has allowed the team to quickly and easily share ideas online. Through easily accessible and editable online documents, every team member can stay up to date with the most recent revision of a document. It also allows us to view all changes made to documents, which makes it easy to give opinions on any slight changes the document may have gone through.
After our initial discussion of our idea, a spreadsheet with objectives and due dates was created and turned into a Gantt Chart. This helps the team stay on top of what needs to be completed for the next meeting by giving a nice graphical representation of the timeline and status of each objective.
Google Docs also came in handy when it came time to put together a part list for our dream prototype. We were able to itemize an entire list, complete with prices and links to each product. The links were a helpful resource that saved time when the team needed to look up a quick spec on a component. This spreadsheet also contained fields for price and quantity, which were soon computed to a new cell containing our total price ($1000). This provided a shocking reality check; our current budget is far less than $1000. We are working on ways to make this project more affordable and actively seeking additional funding to retain our initial vision for our prototype.
This project is becoming larger and more thought provoking than any of us could have ever anticipated. After we had come up with the premise for our idea, it seemed as if it would be simple to execute with most of the work going into the coding. We did not realize how many small problems would come up. Coming to the realization that a jacket is too heavy to wear during the summer months and not close enough to provide direct contact with the spine forced us to think of a suitable replacement. The vest seems like a good replacement, but is made out of less material thus losing valuable surface area to attach components. The idea of using zippers to allow the electronics to be easily removed was vetoed due to the fact that zippers are not comfortable when they are rubbing up against your spine. This forced us to look into electronics that can survive being washed. This experience has really changed how I problem solve. I have learned that part lists, spreadsheets, and flowcharts can all expose fundamental flaws in an idea that seems to be reasonable.
