The 'Design Challenge' that we won

Well, it all began when I registered for the 'Design Challenge' in August. This particular course is a 12 credit course spread over the whole semester. I was in a team of six students out of which two were Indians, three Chinese and an African. The project given to us was on 'Intelligent Street lighting'. Our client was another Indian who had graduated from TU Delft about 4 years ago.

This being a 12 credit course involved a lot of work and took most of the time during the week. The challenge was to come up with the live working prototype of 'intelligent street lighting', which till that time was just a concept on paper. We as a team gelled in very quickly and made up a timetable and schedule to which we adhered ourselves. We also had minor team clashes (which team doesn't); it was great fun and a learning experience to solve all those minor hurdles, meet deadlines, complete weekly tasks and update our progress with the coach.

The project began taking shape during the final two months (later half of the first semester). We believed that to come up with a great product extensive testing of the same was a must. We spent considerable amount of time doing field trials and carrying out tests of different permutations and combinations. Finally we were ready with the product and the system as a whole was working in exactly the same way as we had visualized.

But to get the credit points we not only had to make the live working demo but also a poster, a report and a final presentation in hall filled with people from various disciplines and potential investors. There were two Chinese girls in my team and both were from the Faculty of Industrial Design. So they could make really cool animations and visualizations. One of the Chinese girls made the poster for our project and mind you in was awesome. I took on the responsibility of doing the final presentation. There are two reasons for it first I am not afraid to speak in front of a large audience and second my three years of work experience has made a quite a good public speaker.

The final D day was about a week ahead and I still had not finalized the presentation. I revised it completely just the day before the D day and practiced it just once in front of my room mate ( he being a Chinese too). On the D day I was the last one to give the presentation, competing against the other four rival teams for a prize and possibly for a trophy too. I was dressed in plain grey trousers and normal white half shirt. I started off quite well and I kept on improvising with the flow. At the end of my 15 minute talk I was given a thunderous applause and congratulated by many for such a lucid and simple presentation.

Later during the drinks party our team was announced the winner, with the most investments. My joy knew no bounds. All hard work that we put in finally paid off and I was on cloud nine, dopamine levels shooting in my brain.