Product: SANYO Model No. DS19380 Television

Targeted Audience: Elderly Citizens

Feedback:

            Reverse engineering is an engineering method used by Engineers to take apart a product and see how it works. They practice this method to help them find the short comings and failures of the old product to make a new product better. It teaches an industry what they need to improve to make the product better instead of moving forward without knowing the problems of product. This keeps loyal customers by giving them the improvements they wanted out of the old product into a new product, convincing the customer to buy the newer one. This gains new customers by giving them the capabilities they wanted in the older product. For example, the IPad 2 lacked the Retina Display which made some people not want to buy it, but when Apple included the Retina display in the IPad 3 it made those costumers want to buy it.

            The criteria of the new product was to make an improved model of the SANYO TV that had closed captioning, light weight, and easy to use. The constraint of the new product was to make it cost less than $299.99 and come in 3 colors. The criteria helped assist me by making the newer product based off of it and improving it from there. They key components that needed to be upgraded was the weight, the supported inputs, display, and sound delivery. The first thing I did to design my product was to make the display a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) to make it more like modern television sets. Next I relocated the speakers on the sides because some elderly citizens might not hear as well if the speaker was at the bottom of the left hand corner. I made the television with a pivot at the bottom of the TV so that they can angle the TV as needed. To maintain its “old school” appeal, my innovation maintains the rounded corners that serve as a safety design for the elderly also. Then I made the buttons bigger and easier to see so the elderly won’t strain their eyes.

            I think this project is good for beginners of reverse engineering. It showed how industries used to make their TVs and how they improved it. Also I think this project helped in designing a project to accommodate a specific crowd.