College project help request

[Mouse]

My college project is to make a product or to improve existing one,the catch is that it has to have at least 15 parts. Also we were divided in groups of 3 students per group and it seems to me my team is not interested in doing this,so I am thinking of asking my professor to work alone.
My request is: Are there any ideas someone can give me to start with,I know this is stupid,but I am 22 yrs old I have no practical experience at making this kinda projects, so if someone can help me in anyway,maybe some rough sketches or just an idea of something simple yet effective, I would appreciate it very much.
btw I work in AutoCad 2008 (old but gold) and I am trying to install Inventor 2011 to my PC.


Thanks in advance


Mouse

[jboggs]

Welcome to the forum,... and to real life. Don't worry though. Your teammates will be glad to share in the credit!

I would suggest that you just look very carefully around your own world. Find some SIMPLE device (did you get that word? SIMPLE) that you use quite often, and just start asking yourself how you could make it easier, or faster, more useful, or if you really want to get a lot of brownie points in today's politically-correct world, more "green" (whatever the hell that means). My first college design project was a bathroom door lock that could be unlocked from the outside if necessary, like if a child was locked in a bathroom.

[Cake of Doom]

Really wish I'd done mech. eng. now. My first time team project was a 3 storey leisure center!

JBoggs has it spot on with K.I.S.S. principle.

[Kelly_Bramble]

My college project is to make a product or to improve existing one,the catch is that it has to have at least 15 parts.

Seems like a vague request to me... Are we talking about fit, form, function, manufacturability, costing, market-ability, or what?

[Mouse]

Only conceptual phase,with drawings of our solution.

[jboggs]

You misunderstood Kelly's comments. He wasn't talking about WHAT to do. He was talking about WHY to do it. The word "improve" is very nebulous. Improved in what way? Cheaper to make? Easier to use? Longer lasting? Prettier? You have to define the why before you can address the how.

[Mouse]

Well my professor said that we need to improve it in any way; maybe make it easier to use, add some new feature, maybe to design it to be a bit more appealing to the eye and more effective in terms of performance. Me and my team spoke about what we wanna do and the leader of the team has no clear idea what to do, I thought maybe to use @jboggs idea for a lock that could be opened from the outside, but I feel like it would be stealing event though my concept may be different than his idk, Ill try to come up with something, even I thought about this idea (door lock one) a few yrs ago because I got stuck in public restroom due to faulty lock for like 30 minutes, but I did not had the knowledge I have today to make the design happen, so I did not do it, well I will keep this idea in corner of my mind in case my team fail in term of ideas.
Best regards

Mouse

[GlennD]

I've always found that a stroll through an antique shop, particularly those in rural areas always turns up ideas for new solutions to old problems and a lot of times you can instantly see why a device was or was not successful. whats more is that everything you come across was an attempt to solve a specific real life problem whether it worked or not. stuff that works gets copied and sometimes badly. it can also give you a sense on how the the things you use today evolved from simple times.

[pankajkumar]

you first study about the product when clear the concept of the product then you draw.