Our team – made up of 4 Stanford students and 3 NTNU students – worked for 8 months to create an innovative product for our corporate sponsor, Yanmar.
On the journey, we were shown Norwegian customs as we visited our teammates abroad, learned so much about oyster farming, and discovered how to dance with ambiguity from our brilliant (if eccentric) professor Larry Leifer.
I must mention that this page is the briefest of summaries of this project. It might even make it look like we had a clear path towards our goal all along, but please don’t mistake a linear webpage, telling a linear story, for what was decidedly not a linear process. We were given a broad prompt to work with and we struggled for months to find our niche in an industry dominated by large research institutions and corporations – not to mention a field we had no experience in. Additionally, we didn’t just work with oyster farmers: we also went to an abalone farm, mussel farm, even an aquaponics farm! With all of these different lines of discovery, we created countless ideas and piles of prototypes that never saw the light of day, but, in the end, we created something we’re not only proud of but also believe can make an impact.
With that, I end my sappy intro. Carry on.