Manufacturing and Design Engineering (MaDE) Featured Projects
Browse our projects gallery to see examples of past projects.

Assists
Assists uses soccer-style goals, LED lights, and an electronics system to simulate professional passing trainers.
In soccer, the ability to anticipate the arrival of a pass, receive it, and accurately redirect it is essential to executing a game plan.
But it can be difficult for players to develop these skills without multiple players to simulate game scenarios.

Optik
Optik, an all-in-one case for biweekly contact lens wearers.
Biweekly contact lens users often find it difficult to remember to change their contacts on time.
Students designed Optik, a product that includes a reservoir pre-filled with two weeks worth of contact solution.

Fountain Flex
Fountain Flex, a sleeve and funnel, allows users to easily fill water bottles.
It can difficult to refill a water bottle due to issues with water pressure, shallow basins and bottle sizes.
With Fountain Flex, users can easily attach a funnel to the rim of a bottle.

Tiny House Project
A 128-square-foot, zero-net-energy mobile house that minimizes impact on the environment.
Living is easy at the Northwestern Tiny House.
This 128-square-foot house utilizes green engineering principles all while offering the comforts of home.

Skallagrim's Forge
A visitor experience for an exhibit that celebrates the cultural importance of Skallagrim's anvil stone.
Preserving the history of the anvil stone.
A visitor experience dedicated to Skallagrim's anvil stone.

Baseball Sensors
Using audio data from sideline and in-base contact microphones to make better close-play calls
Twenty percent of close-play calls are later deemed incorrect by video replay.
With ever-intensifying demands for umpires to get the calls right on the field, a group of four undergraduates developed a solution to improve the accuracy of calls at first base.

TA-DA
An expandable electric car that promotes car sharing.
Challenging traditional transportation systems and inefficiency.
An expandable electric car that promotes car sharing by reconfiguring the vehicle into different multipurpose rooms at the push of a button.

Rest
A multi-functional public seating piece that allows one or multiple users to work or relax.
Tired of sitting on the ground outside or leaning on walls around campus?
This human-centered, multi-functional public seating piece improves comfort in public spaces.

Illuminating Test Strips
An HIV testing solution that rapidly tests infants and those who live in inaccessible testing areas.
Three students are working to improve rapid HIV testing for infants in Africa.
The team is working to identify what in the testing process contributes to the number of false negatives.