October 08, 2009

Having nothing to do while you are waiting to be seated at a restaurant may be a thing of the past, thanks to the work of students at California State University, Fresno.

Fresno State’s first initiative involving three academic colleges is called “Engineering for People and Markets” and is looking at real-life solutions that people can use for everyday problems.

One of the projects is a restaurant pager, called the Wait Mate. The Wait Mate is a traditional pager with LCD screen on which customers can read the restaurant’s menu, play games or browse through other information as they wait for a table.

This kind of innovative product is the result of a collaborative effort at Fresno State aimed at recruiting anthropology, business and engineering students onto Enterprise Teams (E-Teams) to work on technological innovations, said Dr Ramakrishna Nunna, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate dean of the College of Engineering.

The program’s goal is to help students learn to solve real-life problems. While one student team works on the Wait Mate, another team is designing a better TV remote control. The anthropologist on the team is researching TV-watching habits and remote control use to help his teammates come up with a voice-activated remote control.

Supported by a seed grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, the program is an interdisciplinary initiative led by Dr. Henry Delcore, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Dr. Gregory Kriehn, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering that brings together students and faculty from the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Entrepreneurship Program.

Each student team works on an innovative electronic device or process. Looking at the needs and desires of potential users, the teams explore the market potential of their proposed “solutions” while applying knowledge and concepts taught in the classroom.

The collaborative effort is an opportunity for students to apply their education to real-world products by using an interdisciplinary approach.

Conditions in the real world demand that engineers know how to talk to non-engineers, such as anthropologists, said Nunna.

His colleague, Henry Delcore, professor of anthropology, agrees.

“Anthropologists are experts in human behavior, values and settings. If you’re developing a device or process, you want to know something about the person who is going to use it,” Delcore said.

Business is also an important aspect of innovation, according to Dr. George Vozikis, professor of management.

“Entrepreneurship is the last interdisciplinary field. It’s built into what we do. This effort brings together everything in business, psychology and marketing,” he said.

For engineering students, the combination of considering human factors and business planning is a good fit, said Dr. Gregory Kriehn, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “This is a really valuable tool for our students,” he said. “They start working with other disciplines. It helps round out their education.”

“We want to prepare students for things they may do after they graduate,” Delcore added.