Design-a-thon Winners: PRISIM

Hello, this is team Snack Overflow, and our product is the Phone PRISM.

My name is Jared McArthur. I am a sophomore ECE major.

I'm Brooke McArthur. I'm a second year BME major.

I'm Nick Chan. I'm a sophomore ECE major.

And I'm William Gunawan. And I'm a sophomore in CS.

So due to COVID, pretty much every school has moved to an online school format. So to improve the at-home experience, we conducted an Instagram survey to see what problems students have with online learning.

From this survey, we found that students fail to remain productive, stay engaged and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Our product, the Phone PRISM, will be able to solve these problems by removing distractions for a set period of time for focus, studying, and uninterrupted sleep. There are some existing solutions, such as applications that will lock your phone and other products that can lock your phone up. The thing with these applications is that people keep checking their phone to see when they can start using it again and our product has a lot more functionality than existing phone jails.

Our solution is the Phone PRISM, a modern crossover between a phone jail and alarm clock with an app to set specific study and sleep modes.

Our first iteration features a rectangular structure with a pressure plate to detect whether the phone is in the jail as well as an electromagnet to make sure the door is locked and not allow users to access the phone. There's also an LCD with buttons to select different modes.

We then moved on to a more modern triangular design, which features a LCD on the front face as well as a drawer, similar to when you send out mail or return a library book, to place your phone in.

We also accommodate for fitting any size phone as well as if the phone has a phone case. This is our final drawing concept before we started CADing and we used SOLIDWORKS to design our product. So over here, this is the base of our design. You can see how the phone sits up here and the LCD inserts in the back here. There's a hole to put a charging cable to charge your phone and on the back there should be a cover here but I exposed it to show that there is a place for a USB cord to plug in your charger, as well an accommodation for circuitry.

This is how a bumper looks like when you attach it to all three corners and here are the left and right speakers that attach to the main module. Altogether, it makes this product here with the LCD screen right in the center with a drawer to insert your phone and then the speakers to sound alarms.

We took inspiration from the charging outlets on the tables in the EER as they're triangular shaped. And we also took inspiration from a Nintendo Switch dock that has a gate that opens up and down and has a USB port to thread to other areas of the device. As you see here, this is an example of how a wire would go through and charge the phone. With our product being a little over a foot long, this can fit on any desk and nightstand.

The Phone PRISM's LCD display is a touchscreen display and displays the time on a clock, a lock icon to show whether it is locked or unlocked at the time, the sleep schedule, the school schedule and the timer schedule, respectively, represented by a Moon, a book, and a timer. Selecting them turn them on, the sleep, school, and timer and when they are selected in the blank space to the right, it will print something like “Alarm Set” or “Timer Started” and then the countdown for the timer.

This is the home screen and the icon. This is where you can set the sleep schedule, school schedule, and timer length. Simply click on the moon icon or book icon to set the sleep schedule or school schedule and choose the blocks within the week that you want the Phone PRISM to lock a phone inside of it. The timer will simply allow you to choose the amount of time to run the timer. And the calendar gives you a week overview of all the times it is preset to be locked. The app pairs with the Phone PRISM through Bluetooth, so it is all done within the phone and the Phone PRISM has it all preset in.

This allows students to study without the distraction of their phone, go to online class without the distraction of their phone, and sleep on time at a regular interval that is preset to ensure that they have a healthy sleep schedule.

Moving on to the marketing side of the Phone PRISM we began by researching potential competition. On the left here we see a sort of novelty phone jail. This retails for around twenty dollars and does not have an automatic unlocking system. In this the phone is also still visible and could still be distracting. In the middle we see the kSafe. This product was featured on Shark Tank. It does have an automatic unlocking system and allows you to lock anything in it for a set period of time determined by moving the dial. This retails for around seventy dollars. On the right, we see the Timer Lock Safe. This functions very similarly to the kSafe with easy locking controls and an automatic unlocking system and this retails for around forty dollars. In comparison to the Phone PRISM, the Phone PRISM offers a memory function which allows you to not have to reset the timer each time you want to use it. It also has multiple functionalities, speakers and is more visually appealing.

When calculating for profitability, we calculated the cost of manufacturing a single unit of the product. This came out to around thirty dollars per unit. We'd like to sell at a fifty percent markup to allow for potential growth of the Phone PRISM. This means we would sell the product for around fifty to fifty five dollars, which we believe is a competitive price with the kSafe at seventy dollars and the Timer Lock Safe at forty dollars as the Phone PRISM provides more functionality

For the marketing strategy, we have a three step plan. The first is the alpha test, which is small scale marketing through direct connections with a goal of one hundred orders. In this we would 3D print plastic parts for assembly and assemble it ourselves. After this test, we would receive feedback from our buyers and implement any changes we deem necessary before moving on to the beta test. In this test, we have a goal of a thousand orders and we would also create our Kickstarter that would allow us to fund and gain new orders and then design and pay for part molds to use in future production. Given that these two tests are successful, we'd moved to the official product launch, which would feature a preorder phase in which we'd advertise on social media and other outlets with a goal of being on QVC to increase our potential buyer reach. We could also host a fundraising event in which we could introduce buyers to the physical product itself. With this, we have a goal of a thousand preorders and then 10000 sales of the Phone PRISM in the first year. After this, we would begin our launch and begin manufacturing and completing orders.

For future growth, we would like to move away from the Internet and move to sell in tech stores or department stores as well as maybe on Amazon, and in regards to the phone prism itself, we'd like to add additional colorways wireless charging capabilities for phones internally, make the phone present more portable with a rechargeable battery, add more app functionality, music playing ability, and detachable Bluetooth speakers.

And that is the Phone PRISM. Thank you.

Solid Works.