I very much admire engineering students who wish to build their final year projects on their own.
Talk to any such enthusiastic final year student of engineering about their project. They would tell you few out-of-the-box ideas that might never have occurred to you.
Many a time, students aim to build a college project that they could later release it as a commercial product in the market. They wish to offer more features and price their product lower than that of the current players in that field of business.
I can’t help but think that students don’t know difference between the idea of a project and a product.
Let me explain with an example.
A couple of years ago, I remember talking to an electronics engineer who wanted to design an electronic walking stick for visually challenged people. The core idea was that the stick had remote sensors that could sense objects in proximity. In case of encountering an obstacle, the stick would alert the holder of stick by vibrations and by sounding an alarm.
So far, this project sounds doable.
The student goes on describing about the features of this intelligent walking stick. The stick should be able to detect the current light indicator in a traffic light signal.
Hmm… technically, could get a bit tough this one.
The feature description of this stick isn’t completed yet. The walking stick should be able to SMS to the current coordinates of the stick to a preset phone number. So that people could track where the stick currently is carried.
I take a deep breath, waiting for the student to finish the project feature description.
This walking stick should be able to remotely operate the electronic door lock and fan switches of the stick owner’s house.
By this time, I’m already overwhelmed, mentally calculating the complexity and time required for finishing this project. I don’t want to discourage budding engineers that come up with new ideas, but would like to tell them few important things that have to be kept in mind before committing a project idea.
First and foremost, it is a college project and not a commercial product. The primary purpose of a college project is for the student to learn practical application of technologies. Whereas goals of a commercial product is profit and fitness for a purpose.
It is okay if your college project, electronic walking stick doesn’t work properly in real life as long as it demonstrates the concept as a prototype. But if your commercial product, electronic walking stick doesn’t help the person using it to detect an obstacle in realtime, this is a critical issue, can become a legal issue too.
The point here is every product in market right from toothbrush to iphone, undergo rigorous testing process, undergo scrutiny of standards and tests. Products come with legal guarantees or warrantees. Whereas the college projects are not expected to be infallible, it’s okay if the project has few defects. The reviewers of your project won’t scrutinize you with legal processes if it doesn’t work perfectly.
So, if you are doing an engineering project, set out with an aim to learn practical application. Before committing to commercialize your project, review your capabilities in a realistic manner. Ask yourself, if you implemented such concept in college laboratory, if you have someone around to help you out if you get stuck. Set realistic goals and do original projects not to impress your fellow students but to learn something.
About the Author: Sridhar Jammalamadaka is the Editor of Interview Mantra. He's a typically non-typical Software Engineer from Pune, India. He likes entrepreneurship, web technologies and Micro Controller programming. He enjoys playing cricket and piano (but rarely does these activities). Through this website, he wishes to gather a large community of aspiring engineers, entrepreneurs and professionals from all parts of the globe. You can connect with him on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/sridhar.j 
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