Our Design Process

When our design team started our journey to ExpoFest, we looked at several possible design concerns, including a double sided soccer shin guard, Pringles Potato Chip Can that moves the chips to the top, and a spill proof plate.

Our class kept coming back to our cell phones . . .

What if there was a better way to wall charge in public spaces?

What if there was a safer way to wall charge in public spaces?

What if there was a more practical way to clean your phone?

What if there was a way to protect your phone inside your pocket from damage by coins, keys, etc?

What if there a way to utilize the back of your phone case for multiple uses?

Then, Phone Shield was born . . .

Our products:

Phone Hammock and PhoneBacks

Here is our Visual Timeline of our Design Process

Check out our daily progress/Engineering Notebook in detail by clicking the link below

How much do phones weigh??

While testing our PhoneHammocks, we had to find an average weight of cell phones. We wanted to make sure that the PhoneHammock can support the weight of different cell phones.

We took our phones and weighed them and took the average as shown above. We then made phone mock-ups for our 48 hour test using wood and metal weights. This allowed us to test the PhoneHammocks in public and not worry about the phones being stolen.

Check out the mock-ups being made below:

How Do we attach our PhoneBacks??

3M came to our school and helped us figure out what tape/adhesive we’re going to use for our PhoneBacks. We first played around with Scotch Model # 9472LE. We decided that this tape can somewhat easily be pulled apart.

Then we used Model # 5925. We figured out that this tape was really thin and you needed steady hands so the tape would no roll up. It also was really sticky so it was hard to put the tape on the phone case.

Then finally we picked Scotch VHB model #F9473PC. This tape is durable and if someone wants to take off the PhoneBack of the case then they can. The other tapes left material/residue on the phone.

We tested the tapes by sticking our PhoneBacks on our test phone and keeping them in our pockets for 24 hours. As mentioned above, some tapes held up well, others did not.

Check out the pictures of our team trying out different tapes.

Website Development

After designing our website, we sent the link out to the teachers at our school. We asked them to review our site from their school computer, home computer, and their phones.

We wanted to see if any browsers had a hard time viewing our website. One of our teachers reported that her iPhone 7 did not view the site properly. Another teacher noted that Mozilla Firefox did not view the site properly.

We used Google Chrome and Wix to make our website, and placed a disclaimer on the home page to use Google Chrome to view the PhoneShield Website for the best viewer experience.

Will It Burn??

Our advisers from Ward Leonard reviewed our PhoneHammock and thought the design was well thought out, tested, and reviewed. There was one concern they wanted us to address, and that was the temperature of the phone while charging. Would this heat reach the flash point of the cloth the PhoneHammock is made of.

We went back to school and researched their concerns. We discovered that when cell phones charge, they reach a temperature of 109.4 degrees F. We located a chart of flash points of different cloths, and the flash-point is 400 degree F or higher as shown in the chart below.

We can see that the PhoneHammock can safely store and charge our phone.

Our Trade Booth & Pitch

We wanted to make sure our trade show booth and Pitch for ExpoFest were perfect. We made a mock trade booth in our shop to see how it looks. We tried different layouts to see what would look the best to attract many people to our booth. We had some of our teachers check out the layout for advice.

We did the same thing for our Pitch. We practiced our Pitch in shop and had teachers review our presentation skills, voices, and eye contact. We also practiced working our trade booth by asking each other questions we think the public will ask us at ExpoFest.

We are looking forward to meeting everyone at ExpoFest!

Check out our layout and practice photos below.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​