这个学期参加了两个商业挑战赛，而且还都取得不错的成绩。我对比赛的结果还是感到很满意，因为在这两个比赛中能够获奖不是一件很容易的事情。在比赛前，我一直认为只要有一个好的点子就可以，但事实上比赛更侧重于实际，对所设计的产品不要求有多么高的技术含量，但一定要有很好的市场前景，最重要的是要能够带来利润。我们第一个IDEA就是设计一个可以在超市手推车上的技术器，可以记录顾客在车里已经购买的多少钱的商品。这样可以节省结账的时间，并且顾客也对自己应该花的钱做到心中有数。我们一开始都对这个设计感觉不错，但后来听了老师说的，我们恍然大悟：顾客自然喜欢这样的东西，但商家不会喜欢，这样商家必然会有损失，所以不会有超市愿意安装这样的技术器。的确，我们在评估自己产品的同时，所考虑的角度有所偏差。
后来我们又考虑了很多设计的可行性，最终定下了一个帮助失语征或语言有障碍人的设备（详细的介绍在下面，英文的，懒的翻译了），我们调查了一下市场，目前并没有类似的产品，所以我们对自己的设计也很有自信。虽然我们的产品还是很不错的，但我们也看到了自己的不足之处，正因为这样的产品不存在，所以产品需要一定时间的研发期，所以利润就受到了限制。再有就是可能产品过于着重技术的问题，所以在我们做Prsentation的时候，评委可能也不是很容易理解，所以可能也是我们不能再上一层楼的原因吧。
下学期应该还会继续参加比赛，有了这次的经验，下次就会提早准备，争取能够有所突破。
因为原文件很长，所以就摘了一些有用的东西。
XIMO Speaker
An advanced device to help people with Aphasia orspeaking difficulty
Business Idea
Ximo-speaker is an advanced device to help people with Aphasiaor speaking difficulty.
Ximo-speaker is designed for people, who have difficulty inspeaking or dumb people who want to “speak”. The productconsists of a glove with build-in accelerometers and a processorwith speaker to talk with the users (Figure 1, p23). Accelerometeris an apparatus that can calculate the spatial change of a subjectby measuring its acceleration. Most people will have difficultyunderstanding sign language, and therefore this product is to helpinterpret the physical movements of sign language into digitalsignal and send it to processor. The speaker will read the“word” out after the signal data is processed and identified.The most important advantage is the “translation” procedure issimultaneous, and we do not need any other people as a translator,which will result in a more effective communication.
Another use of this product is for deaf and dumb people. Since the translation is spoken out at the same time, it also can be used for some conferences when these people are invited to speech.
When users start to use Ximo-speaker, they will be asked to express a certain number of sentences in their sign language, like“this device can help me communicate with you”. The device will automatically build up a user profile to save the custom settings and user data, after accelerometers record the movement and compare them with some original data defined in the database. Users will use it easily and effectively only after a few hours practice. This is because the movements of different people may differ in their amplitudes. The practice will help the device to customize the system for the user.
For majority of people who have this discomfort, they actually can not communicate normally with other people because people seldom know sign language; they will also feel embarrassed to go out alone when they are asked something or they want to ask something. Now with the help of this product, it will solve this kind of problem and bring them more benefits than they can ever imagine. They can have more friends to talk with and reduce many inconveniences in life. For present the technologies related to accelerometer are already mature, but its application in this field is a new try. In the future, we can update our product by improving the calculation accuracy of the movements and providing different style of the speaking voices. Therefore uses can choose the voice that they like. And it is also possible to build an exactly voice as the users’ if the users can provide some sound clip.