Project 2, Process 2
Now that are project is wrapping up, I thought I would elaborate on it. Our team worked very well together, in fact so well we almost finished the entire presentation in class on Wednesday. There was no conflicts and we were all open with each other on our ideas.
Our project is about having too hot/too cold of feet in the winter time. We’ve all experienced this walking to class or waiting for the bus where our feet are freezing but once we get inside our not so “warm” shoes all of a sudden turn into saunas and feet start to sweat! And then to top it off when we go back outside, all of that sweat freezes and makes your feet even colder than they were in the first place!
We, group 6, decided to approach this problem by creating a mind map first, shown in my process 1 post. On the mind map, the problem was broken down into audience, students/homeless/public transportation users, constraints, cost/materials/safety, and potential ideas for fixing the problem. We came up with many of these from socks that are electric to microwavable boot liners to our final choice, a three layered sock.
The idea behind the three layered sock is quite simple. The first layer is a thin layer of wool, a material that is notorious for keeping feet warm in the winter. The second layer would be a layer of a special fabric used for running clothes. This fabric reacts to certain situations and can change the climate such as when it comes into contact with moisture (sweat) and will begin to cool itself down, making temperature regulation for the user much more simple! This fabric is super cool and sciencey and I love that we’re using it. The third layer, outside layer, is a layer of Gor-Tex. Many of you have probably seen this word stitched on your winter jacket or apparel. Gor-Tex would wick away any sweat.
The wool layer now is strictly to keep the foot warm in cold situations. The middle layer, runners material, is to help regulate the temperature inside the sock and cool down when it begins to be too hot. Then the Gor-Tex is used to wick away moisture, eliminating the problem of frozen sweaty feet. All three of these put together should help make walking outside more enjoyable.
We don’t claim that this will work perfectly, but we do believe it will eliminate the extremes of our problem. As long as your feet aren’t super hot or super cold, it make walking outside a more enjoyable activity in the winter.
I talked to a few of my friends about our project idea, and they thought it was innovative and cool! They believe it would work too, and would definitely like to see this sock actually happen. They did however bring up the order of the sock. We would need to experiment more on what the best order would be, because maybe the runners material should go first and be placed up against the foot so it would feel the sweat immediately as it radiates off the bottom of the foot so it doesn’t have to wait to go through the wool layer. However, since these materials are so expensive and this is just a project, we don’t have the funds to go out and buy a decent amount of each of these materials to experiment with. Especially since the runners material, as far as we know, can only be bought if we bought a jacket made of the material and so on, which is way too expensive for a few kids on a college budget! These are things to think about though and can possibly come into play once we get farther down the design process if we do.
Next, we outlined a few of our thoughts on the future of the product. Obviously finding the best order of materials is the first, and then there is manufacturing. We want the socks to be under $20, give or take, and to be sold everywhere socks and athletic clothing is sold. Target, REI, Dick’s Sporting Goods, shoe stores, etc... We also would want to make varying heights of the sock so it can be worn with all shoes and then many different colors. The idea of maybe making summer sock came about as well. This sock would do more cooling than heating and could be essential when participating in outdoor activities in the summer months such as running or hiking!
All in all, so far I have really enjoyed actually being able to fix this problem, unlike project one, and bounce ideas off of other people who all have the same goal as me, to fix this horrendous hot/cold feet problem!