Time to read: 2 min
This past Saturday afternoon, the Fictiv team hosted a group of 20 high school girls to teach them about prototyping and manufacturing.
The girls were part of ChickTech, a nonprofit program for high school girls that creates engaging hands-on engineering workshops, in partnership with startups and big technology companies. Groups like ChickTech are doing incredible work to encourage girls to consider STEM careers, about which we’re very passionate here at Fictiv.
We believe that hardware teardowns are one of the best ways to show how hardware is made, so we decided to do a teardown of the XBOOM Mini Portable Capsule Speaker—well, six of them.
In groups of four, the girls followed along attentitively as manufacturing engineer Sylvia Wu walked them through each piece of the speaker, starting with the molded body, down to the very last spring. Throughout the workshop, Sylvia explained not only how each part worked, but what method was used to produce it.
After disassembling the speakers, the girls were given a walkthrough of the process, from idea to prototype to manufacturing, and the many different processes and tools available. Each group, empowered with knowledge about how the product worked, took their own creative spin on reusing or repurposing it, an outcome that we didn’t foresee. Some chose to reassemble their
After disassembling the speakers, the girls were given a walkthrough of the process, from idea to prototype to manufacturing, and the many different processes and tools available. Each group, empowered with knowledge about how the product worked, took their own creative spin on reusing or repurposing it, an outcome that we didn’t foresee. Some chose to reassemble their
All in all, this event turned out to be an inspiring day for everyone. We were pleased to have been able to work with such a bright group of young women and are excited to see what they do next with their newfound knowledge!