Week 1

Final Project Design

09/03/2025-09/10/2025

Idea

The idea came from my recent experience participating in the largest Hackathon event in China. During this event, I had an idea with my friend Leo that we can build a wearable device that listens to conversations and provide live feedback through haptics or red/green signals. Our vision was that we could use these devices in challenging scenarios such as dating, professional presentations, or parent-child conversations, where users might not know how to express themselves properly. We hoped that the wearable device can act as a coach to help users become a more confident speaker.

However, we didn't have any hardware experiences and couldn't find teammates with hardware expertise. In the end, we could only build the software prototype showing how the conversation can be recorded for LLM to analyze. While our software demo still won an prize, I knew we were missing the necessary piece of device to fully realize our idea.

Coming to MIT and discovering the course How to Make (almost) Anything, I knew I had the chance to develop the skillsets that I lacked. Through this class, I hope to continue

Research

I started researching more about how to build a successful wearable device. My initial search landed me on the details of building my own ring:

  • Smart Ring Development

    • I immediately learned how challenging it would be to build a ring device, which involves building a flexible circuit board that can fit in the small space of the ring. After consulting with , I switched my focus to developing a wearable necklace, which allows more room for error in my first time building something.

    Sketch

    I tried sketching different design of the necklace, mainly trying different shapes and contours.

    Learning

    Then, I started learning the 3D modeling tool: Fusion 360. I followed the popular tutorial taught by Product Design Online on YouTube called Learning Fusion in 30 Days, where I created the following designs.

    3D Modeling

    Finally, I started working on 3D modeling my necklace design. I first created a sketch of the base of the necklace, which is an octagon. Then, I used the extrude feature to stretch my sketch into the 3D necklace. I created a smaller octagon on the top surface with the diameter of 22.5mm and invertly extrueded the smaller octagon by 2mm. On this plane, I added the image of the shape I want to add on my necklace and used the curve line feature to trace the outlines, before extruding the outlines by 2mm to complete the design.