Now it’s the time of another project season for B. Tech students and I’m getting a lot of messages from students seeking project ideas. They are asking for projects in latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Drone technology, blah blah…. without giving any importance to the idea . I am writing this blog post to share my thoughts about creating a project.
There are mainly 4 phase in development of a project.
- Team Formation & Ideation
- Planning
- Execution
How to get a good project idea?
Most of the students search in Google for getting project ideas with key words such as EEE project ideas, EC project ideas, Project ideas with latest technologies etc and then reaches a website which has a list of 100 so called best project ideas. Some students also reaches various project centres for developing projects. They end up taking some existing or previously done project ideas and copy the whole concepts from that site. And the interesting thing is that when we ask about the innovative aspect of project. They will claim
We have made a low cost , high efficient, portable model of so and so…
They fail to realise the fact that when we are converting a project into an industrial product, there will be a huge variation in costing due to variation in components. For example in projects, we can Arduino boards as micro-controller. But when it comes to industrial model, Arduino lacks several capabilities for long time working.
Now a days students are fascinated by technologies by not ideas and the after effects of this is that they develop projects just as a demonstration of such high end technologies without any particular use to the society.
Do you know what’s the difference between a scientist and an engineer??
A scientist invents technologies while an engineer develop products beneficial to the society utilising these technologies.
The duty of an engineer is to find solution for common problems using technology.
In my view, we should build projects which are capable of solving problems faced by society or common people.
Now next question will be where we can get such ideas.
From Social Media ??
No, social media only displays what you are really interested like newer technologies, new innovations etc, but it hides the actual problems faced by humanity. So from where we can get problems?
Answer is simple read newspapers daily. They highlights the problems faced by society. Choose a problem from them and think about the solution you can develop.
Think about the solution in your mind. Think when you are solo like travelling, walking around etc.
It may take one or two days but I’m pretty sure that you can see your ideas in dreams if you think about it honestly. It’s from my experience.
After getting such an idea, validate its feasibility and practicality first with people around you.
I used to discuss my ideas with a hardware shop owner in front of my house. When I start discussing ideas with him, Electricians and Plumbers used to join with us and made creative suggestions which fine tuned my ideas.
Now it’s Kerala is facing disasters due to heavy rain fall and flood. As engineers it’s the time we must think of ideas to help people affected by floods such sustainable solutions to avoid electrocution, provide emergency communication, rescue devices etc
Guys, what are you waiting. Go on invent and make differentz in the society
To be continued…