A Senior at New Trier Spends Four-Weeks in Our Studio
Dakota Dunn spent four weeks in our studio prior to graduating high school at New Trier in order to gain a better understanding of the product development field. He took a few minutes to share his story about his experience with us.
“It is hard to believe that it has already been four weeks. All those train rides and walks to work seem to have passed so quickly. I was skeptical before beginning the internship, but now I wouldn’t have chosen anything else. One of my main goals was to create something in CAD. The first few days I powered through the tutorials in SolidWorks. Surprisingly it came to me fairly easily; even some designers commented how much I’d advanced for not even knowing it in the first place.
Everyone at Beyond Design was so helpful and kind. The designers even printed some of my designs on their MakerBot. I now have a really good understanding of the entire product development process. I’ve had experience with everything from CAD to idealization, including sketching and considering how the final product will be manufactured.
One of my favorite parts of the internship is when I worked on a Water Pik project. I helped the designers come up with sketches and modifications for a next generation model of a previous design. I thought about a better way to connect the handle to the device. I went through the sketches and used something like what Dyson uses to connect their remotes into the curved surface of their fans. After all the sketches for the cradle were made, two of the designers refined them and sent them off to the company for approval. A couple of weeks later, one of the designers called me over and showed me that Water Pik had taken my idea and created a 3D model of it and shipped it back to us. I can officially say that I played a role in the design when that product gets released into the marketplace. There is no other senior project that I could have accomplished something like that.
All of the people who work at Beyond are just great people and most of them aren’t too much older than me. The designers helped me to learn a lot of new skills that I can bring to college and the real world. Overall this whole experience was amazing and I’m so thankful for the opportunity I had.”
Some of the projects he worked on are shown below.
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