2017-2018 Source America Design Challenge

Description

What is the Design Challenge?

The SourceAmerica Design Challenge is a national engineering competition in which participants create innovative workplace technologies for people with disabilities. The innovations enhance employment options and increase productivity in the work environment. There are two levels, one for high school and one for college.

Student teams collaborate with a nonprofit agency that employs people with disabilities, and/or work directly with an individual who is experiencing difficulties in the workplace. The goal of this partnership is to invent a process, device, system or software that enhances productivity or helps an individual with disabilities overcome workplace obstacles. Inventions are evaluated based on their impact in the workplace.

Who Benefits?

Individuals with disabilities work with enthusiastic, knowledgeable students to create and receive free, custom-made assistive technology that improves their work environment.

High school and college students have the opportunity to step out of the classroom to experience a real-life engineering challenge and create a solution that significantly improves someone’s job proficiency.

Nonprofit agencies gain from student inventions that increase workplace efficiency and revenue. In addition, agencies often receive positive media coverage for working with their communities and finalist agencies receive monetary awards.

Submission

- Your project must include a video, technical paper and any additional paperwork. All items are mandatory and must be uploaded to your team’s Egnyte folder.
- Items required for project submission include:

• A brief project summary that may be published in the event program, press releases or other event marketing/communications materials.
• Authors Agreement: One agreement per team is required, and should list all team members.
• Post-Project Survey: All student team members must participate in the survey.
• Updated Team Roster: This will determine who will receive prizes, so accurate contact information is a must. Please include contact information for your SME and/or nonprofit agency. This information will be used for an interview, if necessary.
• Technical Paper: The following guidelines provide basic information about format and style for your technical papers. Authors should refer to accepted style guides for additional assistance.
• 3D Model Drawings: the 3D model must be shown using drawings that will be included in your project submission. Include dimensioned drawings of each part in your model and an assembly of your model if necessary. If your invention is software, include "flow diagrams" or "logic diagrams" of the program.
• Video.