2019-20 Senior Design Projects

Sponsor

Gildan

Team Members

Jazmen Gary, Ben Hindley, Courtney Ledlow

Project Description

The goal of this project was to create a measurably cooler athletic sock with long lasting cooling properties to help keep the wearer cool and dry, thereby, improving their athletic performance. As of today, there are no true cooling socks on the market, and this may be attributed to a couple of challenges this study serves to address. First, it is difficult to quantify cooling with any specific lab test since the sock is in an enclosed environment, and second, the shoe inhibits evaporative cooling. In order to address these issues, a list of important measurables was created and innovative ideas were generated by incorporating existing cooling technologies, engineered cooling yarns on the market, foot sweating patterns, and various knit structures. 

The design process consisted of four primary stages. First, the yarns were ordered in similar denier and analyzed in a single structure. The best performing yarns were selected and then tested in various yarn and knit structure combinations to identify the best performing samples. In conjunction with the second part of the DOE, a company called MESH01 was used to gather data on the yarn samples. These yarn samples were knitted into basic athletic socks and given to various users across the United States along with a survey in order to measure the performance quality of the materials and the trends in desired sock characteristics per user. Finally, it was planned that the first sock prototypes would be constructed using the optimal yarn and knit structure combinations by considering the properties provided by each combination and how they would react with the natural foot sweating patterns.

This project allowed us to develop a better understanding not only of cooling technology, techniques, and testing, but also the design process, the construction of experiments, and how best to orchestrate and plan a product development process from start to finish. Putting the final product aside, this project has been more than successful in that it has made us into better team members and engineers.

Sponsor

Team Members

Lexi Brewer, John East, Alisha Spradlin

Project Description

For this project, our team was tasked with working with Avery Dennison to utilize their post-industrial textile waste material from their manufacturing plant in Italy, Collitex, to create a nonwoven baggage solution which follows a recycled economic usage structure. 

Using our technical knowledge and skills to ideate, plan, and implement a design process, our team successfully accomplished creating a sustainable focused non woven material that is strong and durable enough for shipment packaging purposes. 

Over the past two semesters, our team went through several experimental stages to accomplish our goal. Our first stage was ideating our test methods, materials, and equipment that we needed throughout the year. We worked alongside SouthEast Nonwovens to gain insight into our options. From there, we tested existing materials that were on the market to obtain a benchmark for how durable and strong our final material should be. Through analyzing our benchmarks and finding our goal statistics, we were able to identify what we needed in order to obtain the strength and durability of our potential fabric. 

From this information, we created a vast array of fabric samples with varied composition ratios that went through either a lamination or a calendering process. These samples were then tested via the Martindale Abrasion tester or the Q-Test Ball Burst tester to obtain data on durability and bursting strength and narrow down our final fabric options based on our benchmark data. From this, we were able to determine a smaller sample group to test and eventually landed upon our final fabric composition that exhibited the most durable and strongest characteristics. 

Throughout this year-long project, our team has learned a lot about what it means to work as a group to accomplish a goal. We had the opportunity to sharpen our engineering and technical skills through experimental design, problem solving, design implementation, active communication, and teamwork. Being able to work alongside Avery Dennison has provided us with insight into what it will be like working in a real-word job setting.

Sponsor

Gildan

Team Members

Eden Cabrera, Carrie Gray, Kristen Poole, Relynne Wolf

Project Description

Our team worked with Gildan to produce and enhance two areas of innovation in socks for the everyday athlete. Gildan aims to have socks with energy return and cushion resilience, properties only explored in shoes until now. Energy return and cushion resiliency are important due to reducing fatigue in athletes. Shoes on the market provide not just shock absorbency but storage and release of kinetic energy. Because socks provide important cushioning to the stride, cushion resilience is important so the sock can recover cushion height throughout running. 

We researched biomechanics, sock construction, animal biomimicry, and innovative yarn cross sections to inform our sock design. Our team quickly realized that there were no test methods to collect the data our project needed, so our project also centered on developing an accurate test method for energy return in socks. The prototypes were made using two different polyester yarns and two different knit structures, terry and jersey, to compare all combinations and to determine the ideal material and construction for the second prototype. Our latest sock prototype uses a double layer construction to maximize energy return and cushion resilience. 

In this project, we learned the importance of frequent communication with our sponsor and how to design test methods to collect the best data.

Sponsor

Hanesbrands Inc.

Team Members

Hyun Jae Cho, Alex Obiol, Jasmine Rouse, Mayuri Senthilnathan

Project Description

Generation Z is the largest population in the United States. Hanesbrands Inc. enlisted our senior design team to create a product or branding strategy to appeal to this growing generation and their needs. To do this, we focused on consumer trends and market research to identify what exactly Generation Z consumers were looking for in their apparel. From this research, we identified six key concepts: health, internet, social responsibility, individuality, technology, and money. With these concepts in mind, our team ideated on product lines that would align with the needs and desires of Generation Z and Hanesbrands. The result of this ideation was four final concepts: an eSports gaming glove, and LED light wearable hoodie, a social responsibility themed t-shirt, and aromatherapy scented garments. To validate that our ideas aligned with Generation Z and to select a final idea, we held a pop-up booth in Wolfpack Outfitters showcasing prototypes of each of the four ideas. Students passing by were given the opportunity to fill out a survey on each of the concepts. We used JMP statistical software to analyze the data we collected from the pop-up. Ultimately, the aromatherapy garment garnered the most excitement and became our final selection.

Next, we began to investigate the design for an aromatherapy garment. The design for the garment has to be functional, unique, and practical in order to generate excitement and buying power for Hanesbrands. To satisfy these needs, we chose to move forward with a hoodie with a two-layer, essential oil-infusing drawstring at the hood. Essential oil can be deposited at the aglet of the hoodie string. Then, the oil would diffuse upward to the inner layer of the string while the outer layer would contain the oil. To validate this idea, we needed to check its overall feasibility in use and in the Hanesbrands supply chain. Through collaboration with Hanesbrands, we were able to learn more about the supply chain of their current hoodies and analyzed the placement of our own hoodie string in that chain.

Sponsor

Hanesbrands Inc.

Team Members

Connor Dunn, Taylor Kearney, Danny Scrudato

Project Description

Graphene was the subject of a Nobel Prize in 2010. Research on graphene claims that the material has a suite of impressive material properties including high thermal conductivity, bactericidal capability, very high tensile strength, and even mosquito repellency. Since then, this groundbreaking super-material has become the subject of much research and boasts unparalleled properties in its pure form; it has gained the interest from companies, including textile companies. This year, Hanesbrands Inc. asked our team to explore and investigate the possibility of producing garments that utilize graphene enhanced yarns. After researching the properties of graphene, we reached out to Graphene One about using their graphene-oxide enhanced fiber line, Kyorene(R), for our project.

By using the only graphene enhanced fiber on the market, we evaluated how the presence of graphene in the fiber affects thermal, mechanical, and antimicrobial properties. We used this data to provide Hanesbrands with a recommendation regarding which product lines would benefit most from a graphene enhanced fabric as well as an analysis detailing whether the use of graphene is worth pursuing at this time. Our team learned a lot of valuable information: the notable difficulty in spinning graphene enhanced fibers due to their potential electrical conductivity, the depth of a product development cycle and the associated cost and logistical barriers, and utilizing our individual strengths to work together as a team.

Sponsor

Avery Dennison

Team Members

Hannah Allgood, Heather Freeman, Emily Stolarcyzk

Project Description

Per rising market trends in digital printing in the textile industry, Avery Dennison wanted to explore the feasibility of introducing this technology to their capabilities. We were asked to explore various print methods-specifically in regard to Avery Dennison’s Printed Fabric Label (PFL) division and asked to incorporate greater stretch into the fabrics. These labels are sold to textile manufacturers for placement in all types of textile goods. The comparison to the PFL’s is to understand these opportunities and evaluate how they could expand beyond that division and play a greater role in the Avery Dennison printing textile department. 

The design process for our project was unique in that it consisted of one iteration instead of multiple iterations of a prototype. The purpose of this project is to gather information about how the different fabrics interact with the various printing methods and then to provide an analysis and recommendation. 

The design of experiments had 36 sample combinations composed of nine different fabrics and four digital printing methods. The four print methods explored were: latex printing, dye sublimation with transfer paper, dye sublimation direct to fabric, and ink-jet using a FujiFilm Dimatix. Our fabrics were woven at Wilson College’s weaving lab and purchased from online vendors. The fabrics were also made of various yarns made of recycled polyester and various yarns using polyester/lycra. The fabrics represented three weave structures: plain, 2/2 twill, and sateen. Each fabric was analyzed on its readability, stretch, wash fastness, and crockfastness. By exploring these parameters, Avery Dennison gains a better understanding of how evolving technology can help them expand and better serve their business. 

Sponsor

Kaneka

Team Members

Jamie Honeycutt, Lillian Lopez, Angelica Talley

Project Description

More than 62.3 million gym members visit the gym 104 days per year. Every time they go, they get hot and drenched in sweat. Now imagine a fiber that could be incorporated into your clothing to help you cool down. Our senior design project was sponsored by KANEKA and centered around Kaneka Infrared Absorptive Fiber (KIRAF), a fiber they developed that has heightened IR management properties. The fiber has already been in use in protective workwear such as firefighter gear. The goal of this project was to explore ways in which the KIRAF fiber could potentially be used when incorporated into other products. We also evaluated how the addition of KIRAF fiber into a product would affect and possibly improve the product.

After narrowing down our ideas of all the possible products KIRAF could possibly be incorporated in, we decided to focus on looking at how well KIRAF could work in a sports shirt type garment. We began working with the knitting lab at Wilson College to develop fabrics that would be suitable for sport shirts of different polyester/KIRAF blends.We ordered a commercial garment with similar properties to compare our developed fabrics to. We decided to test these fabrics on key metrics such as heat transfer, breathability, hand, and wicking as these are important characteristics to active wear. Based on this, we evaluated how the different polyester/KIRAF blends compared to 100% polyester and the commercially available garment.

Sponsor

Lear Corp.

Team Members

Gillian Armstrong, Annali Evling, Sally Gross, Tony Oh

Project Description

Polyester (PET) has been used in 95% of automotive seat covers since the early 1990’s. Concerns have arisen over its continued use due to the fact that PET is not derived from renewable resources and takes 20-200 years to decompose. Natural fibers offer a green alternative to PET as they are renewable materials, and those derived from plants absorb carbon dioxide instead of releasing it into the environment. With these things in mind, Lear Corporation approached the team with the goal to create a more sustainable automotive car seat fabric with at least 30% natural fiber by content. The group is also tasked with exploring the use of recycled PET, which is growing in availability yet seldom used in automotive components. 

Conceptualization of the project started with benchmarking existing PET automotive upholstery fabrics to determine baseline performance properties for the new fabric. Natural fibers were ranked by most feasible for this particular application, as well as how well they aligned with the group definition of sustainability. Wool and hemp ranked the best in performance and sustainability categories, respectively. After securing the right yarns, we researched which fabric structures would best allow the incorporation of the natural yarns into a fabric. Inspiration was taken from traditional denim, a fabric which uses natural staple fiber yarns, yet is known for its strength and durability, and thus the first prototype was created using a denim twill weave. The team also created a prototype using a hopsack weave, as this is an industry standard. Once testing was performed on these prototypes, it was found that the twill weave performed best in the wool fabrics in terms of both tensile strength and abrasion resistance. We settled on a wool/PET twill fabric, which was proven to meet the most important requirements for a car seat fabric. There has also been significant progress and research into the feasibility of a hemp/PET fabric, as there were promising results that indicated the possible success of a hopsack fabric constructed from these yarns. We hope to change the way manufacturers and consumers evaluate the upholstery in cars and bring a more sustainable future to the industry.

Sponsor

FilSpec

Team Members

Sam Anderson, Patrick Hughes, Maddy Moncla

Project Description

The goal of this project was to develop an athletic garment which utilizes evaporative cooling in order to keep the wearer feeling both cool and dry. Heat related deaths are one of the deadliest and most common weather-related health problems in the United States, and cooling garments aim to mitigate this problem. Partnered with Canadian yarn manufacturer FilSpec, we were provided with Warmfil; a heat-generating, hollow core yarn. Warmfil will work to drive the conversion of sweat from sensible to latent heat through sweat evaporation. This, ideally, would yield a garment that keeps the user feeling cool and dry, perfect for thermal management, in both typical daily activity, as well as high performance athletic applications.

The team followed the product design and development process, starting with scientific research and ideation. Benchmark and competitor products were then identified and tested based on the metrics determined to be critical to the success of our project, such as total heat loss, drying rate, and air permeability. We then proceeded to create several different prototype designs with varying yarn blends, layer orientations, and knit structures. Using a design of experiments, we tested our initial prototypes to select a single design to proceed forward with. The final product is a dual-layer knit design that utilizes Warmfil and other yarns to wick sweat away from the skin and evaporate moisture. 

Sponsor

NuFabrx

Team Members

Margaret Monaco, Ngoc Nguyen

Project Description

Imagine a world in which you didn’t have to take medication for your everyday aches and pains. Instead of taking a pill, what if you could simply put on a piece of clothing? Well you can! NuFabrx is a company that specializes in creating medicated garments infused with capsaicin and CBD to provide long lasting pain relief. NuFabrx tasked our team with developing a wash cycle sensor that will indicate to the consumer when the medication has depleted from the garment, after 25 washes. By exploring the feasibility of various concepts, we decided to create a sensor that utilized dye degradation. In choosing this concept, we created a unique system that shows a distinct change, has a low price, is comfortable, and is washable.

Over the past year, we learned a lot about product development through the design process. The project started off with a benchmarking and ideation phase. Since our product was a new concept, we had to think about parallel technologies that mirrored the mechanisms we were seeking, so we decided to focus on products that were designed to change or fail with time. At the conclusion of the benchmarking phase, we decided to move forward with a multi-component dye degradation sensor that visually indicated 5, 15, and 25 wash cycles. The multi-component dye degradation sensor was created by using three separate dye systems that either used a combination of two dyes or one single dye.  Before determining which dye degradation systems to move forward with, we evaluated different individual dyes to determine their rates of change and researched how the perception of color changed with age to find what colors minimized perception errors. This project taught our team about the science behind color chemistry as well as how color perception differs between different consumer age groups.

Sponsor

Survival Innovations

Team Members

Jonathan Bethel, Wesley Butch, Tyler Johnson, Katherine Vlachos

Project Description

Would you believe it if we told you that the military flotation vests used today are the same ones used in WWII? Furthermore, these vests are bulky, heavy, and difficult for servicemen to repack, taking a full 45 minutes for trained personnel to correctly repackage a single vest. Our team was tasked with developing a new inflatable bladder material that is lighter-weight and improves the packability of the current vest. In turn, these improvements would give servicemen less of a physical burden and allow them to pack their vests more easily after initial deployment. After speaking with our sponsor, we determined the main aspects of the material to focus on were the fabric itself and its coating — we needed to figure out how to reduce weight and flexural rigidity while maintaining the original material’s performance characteristics. 

Our process for completing this project began by deconstructing military flotation vests down to their smallest constituents to research how each material’s physical and mechanical properties contribute weight and bulkiness to the flotation device. Using the current bladder material as a benchmark for weight, tensile strength, flexural rigidity, and air permeability we researched materials that met these same stringent performance requirements. After testing and evaluations, we decided on optimal fabric characteristics for the material, and we designed an experiment to test and evaluate lamination and sealing methods for prospective fabric coatings. After creating prototypes, we discovered it wasn’t difficult to find lighter-weight materials with greater strength than the current one, rather it was more difficult to find the right combination of coating type, coating weight, and sealing method to adequately seal the bladder Throughout this project, we have improved upon our design-of-experiment and project management skills thanks to conversations with our sponsor, professors, and industry professionals.

Sponsor

Jiangsu Hongshun Synthetic Fiber Technology

Team Members

Sydney Beckner, Blake Kearns, Christine Lee

Project Description

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 600 deaths in the U.S. every year are caused by heat, even though heat-related illnesses are preventable diseases. As a result, our team was motivated to create a cooling product to aid thermophysiological comfort in varying environments. Our sponsor provided a bicomponent fiber with a permanently cool feeling. Using the fiber, the goal of the project was to investigate and explore applications for this fiber in markets such as home textiles and performance apparel. Another goal of this project was to find a suitable U.S market for the fiber to enter into as the company wanted to expand its horizons in order to market globally.

We found early on that the yarn has high extension, so we researched a market that adds the cooling properties of the yarn to a compression product. While working with the bicomponent fiber, our team found that a yarn cohesion method was necessary for the next phase of production. Twist insertion and air texturizing were found suitable for processing. Jersey, spacer, and rib knits were created with both the twist inserted and the air texturized yarns. Testing and evaluation were completed and led the team to discover how to optimize the cooling effect with the prototypes’ various knit structures. 

Through collaboration with the Manufacturing Solutions Center, we were able to create a second round of prototypes with different finishing methods to simulate the end product through industrial production. Sample evaluation was in the beginning stages prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Following this, we transitioned to a plan that focused on enabling our sponsor to continue this project after typical operations resume and used the information found earlier in the project to make a continuity plan that allows the company to move forward. Overall, we are extremely grateful for the time spent together learning and growing from this project to expand our knowledge of the product development cycle, thermodynamics, effective communication, research, and teamwork. 

Sponsor

Hanesbrands Inc.

Team Members

Rita Bardon, Shayan Barlas, Min Kim

Project Description

Our planet is dying. Twenty-one billion pounds of textile waste ends up in landfills each year in the U.S. alone, and HanesBrands products are in ninety percent of U.S. households. Our team partnered with HanesBrands, Inc. on a sustainability project to develop a way to reduce pre-industrial waste from being incinerated or thrown into landfills. We benchmarked recycling processes in other industries and recognized the most beneficial thing for Hanes would be to create a closed loop recycling process, where pre-industrial waste can be re-used in Hanes’ products.

With the help of HanesBrands’ sustainability experts, we identified two of Hanes most commonly used fabrics for t-shirts; a 100% cotton jersey and a jersey with a 50/50 cotton-poly blend. The team picked shredding ahead of chemical breakdown and unravelling and used the Nonwovens Institute’s in-house shredder to break the fabric down to fiber form. They ran tests on the shredded cotton fabric and decided to ring spin it with 50% virgin cotton fibers to produce yarn. Our team also assessed the environmental impact of the recycling process by comparing data on our recycled fabric to the life cycle data of a generic cotton t-shirt. To achieve this comparison, we switched out the generic cotton fabric in the life cycle with their recycled fabric. We also assisted Hanesbrands in identifying ways to market the project as a sustainability story. Because the recycled yarn would be coarser than the typical yarn used for a cotton t-shirt, they decided that their yarn would fit best in a sweatshirt product in a brand such as Champion.

Overall, we learned a lot about the effort required to carry a project through from start to finish. The project provided a valuable insight into the industry, from cross-team collaboration to why things are done the way they are. Fabric recycling still has a long way to go in terms of viability due to concerns regarding prices and fabric strength. The biggest takeaway from this project was that thorough planning of ideas and possible technical challenges can go a long way in how smoothly a project continues.

Sponsor

Under Armour

Team Members

Morgan Gunter, Didem Kiryaman, Rachel Park, Nilu Rajendarn

Project Description

The level of sheerness or transparency of a pair of athletic leggings will, more often than not, determine if a consumer purchases them. This attribute has consistently been a pain point for all those who were leggings, specifically women. Our team collaborated with Under Armour to develop test methods that evaluate the sheerness of the brand’s women’s leggings and that can be used in its factories and mills. Pre-existing methods exclusively use visual impression to measure a product’s sheerness while worn on a fit model. Therefore, our main goal was to develop methods that negated the need for a human subject, creating ones that were objective, repeatable, and reproducible. 

Spectral analysis was the first method we tried, by using a handheld spectrophotometer to measure the transparency and color change values. Each fabric was secured in an embroidery hoop and stretched over a neutral-colored dome. The spectrophotometer was used again to measure at the garment level, where various brands of leggings were worn by a mannequin to provide realistic stretch. For our second method, the same fabrics were stretched over a luminous dome and a light meter measured the luminous flux passing through the fabric. In order to compare all sets of instrumental data with visual perception data, we conducted visual impression trials of each fabric and garment tested. Using the AATCC Gray Scale for Color Change and a pass/fail rating, we evaluated the difference in hue between the user’s undergarment and leggings while in a half-squat. Our team  decided to continue developing the luminous flux method as the results more closely aligned with sheerness rankings given in the visual impression trials. We are working to create a method that uses a luminous conical structure over which tubular fabric can be stretched. This will allow us to determine how stretch affects each fabric’s sheerness level by quantifying the luminous flux at specific areas. Not only will this method ensure that Under Armour develops leggings of an appropriate level of sheerness, but it will most importantly help women of all shapes and sizes feel more confident while wearing them.

Sponsor

Gryppers

Team Members

Kyle Chang, Julia Drago, Dylan Kyker, Olivia Turschak

Project Description

An average of 618 Americans die every year as a result of heat-related illnesses, so our aim was to create a knit sleeve that will prevent fatal heat-illness by alerting the user when they are at risk. Our thermal enervation sleeve is integrated with a sensor that notifies the wearer when they are becoming dehydrated and at risk of heat exhaustion by analyzing the sodium ion concentration in their sweat. Sweat is channeled through our sleeve design, wicking it away from the skin and towards the sensor for analysis.

Initially, our team decided that either a spacer fabric or plated fabric would be best for the sleeve channel design, but we eventually decided that a plated fabric is better suited for an athletic garment. With our previous textile knowledge, we decided a hydrophobic yarn against the skin would wick sweat up into the hydrophobic yarn which could then channel that moisture towards a sensor with help from a hydrophobic coating. We conducted a vertical wicking test and a moisture management test on our samples to see how well they transported moisture through-plane and in-plane of the fabric. Through the use of a screen printed hydrophobic coating, we wanted to test the ability of the channel to transport the sweat towards the sensor while also preventing the sweat from evaporating in that area. We conducted an evaporation test on the plated samples and then planned to apply a hydrophobic coating to the same samples and run the test again to see if it slowed the rate of evaporation. The final step of our project was to integrate an outsourced sensor into our knitted sleeve. We planned to use conductive yarn and Velcro to attach the sensor and sew a pocket onto the sleeve that would hold the power source and the microcontroller that collects the data. 

Something we learned during this project was to not let the final product cloud initial ideation processes. This caused some setbacks, as we were putting unnecessary constraints on the project and not focusing on specific steps. We also learned that preliminary testing and collecting data and sweating goal numbers for the product is extremely important for success and progress. 

Sponsor

The North Face

Team Members

Rosemary Edberg, Julia Madsen, Hsin Kuei Lu, Hunter Shumaker

Project Description

Are you feeling “down” about your jacket insulation? Nowadays, jacket insulations are made from goose down and synthetic materials like polyester. Our team was tasked to find an eco-friendly insulation alternative for The North Face that will provide the same warmth and washability as current jackets on the market.

We were challenged to develop an insulation made with a fiberball structure that met industry standards for insulative value, washability, and handfeel. Our team worked with the pilot plant at Wilson College to source and apply various fiber finishes to improve insulation washability. We developed a rating system for clumping after home washing and drying cycles and used ASTM F 1868 through the Textile Protection and Comfort Center to find insulation (clo) values. 

This project allowed us to learn about materials innovation from a hands-on approach as well as discover the benefits and challenges of working with global manufacturers and suppliers. As a result, our team has learned invaluable lessons that we will be able to throughout our careers in the textile industry. 

Sponsor

Red Bull

Team Members

Isaac Apsey, Max Neill, Juan Prezas-Garces

Project Description

In recent years, action sports have become a topic of great interest, with athletes from various disciplines racking up millions of followers on social media. Major companies, such as Red Bull, help to push athletes to new levels – to do things never thought imaginable. In a collaborative effort with Red Bull as well as Teijin Aramid, our team has worked on implementing new materials and developing industry testing equipment for high performance wingsuits in an effort to achieve the longest flight distance possible. 

The wingsuit is made up of multiple sections including the leading edge and the main body. Of these sections, we focused on optimizing the main body fabric which is plagued with high surface roughness. This characteristic is responsible for increased drag and decreased aerodynamic efficiency but can be combated by modified fabric construction, specifically, a basket weave. To make up for lost strength and fabric stability associated with a basket weave construction, we chose to add Teigin’s Technora yarn, a high performance aramid. We tested various fabrics in our custom wind tunnel to show the correlation between fabric surface roughness and skin friction drag. The wind tunnel made extensive use of 3D printed parts including the tunnel supports as well as the test collar. The test collar features a carbon fiber sample plate as well as a load cell attached above for accurate force measurement. This project has been a huge learning experience for the entire wingsuit team. We learned not only how to properly communicate with industry members, but also organize an entire project with numerous deadlines and deliverables. We discovered early that having a concrete idea of what the project involves and the deliverable at the end of the year was extremely important. Overall, the experience that senior design gave us was irreplaceable. There is no better way to learn than to be thrown to the wolves and come back as a pack.