Assignment 19                                                                        30.5.2018

To be able to develop my final project further after its completion, I spent part of this week by considering intellectual property rights.

What is my motivation behind the project

From the start, I have planned that my helmet is made to fulfill my personal needs. I like to act as a different fictional character - especially more mysterious and unreal characters. I prefer to create my own characters and act as them instead of acting as other characters. Therefore, I want to use my helmet as a prop to realize some of these characters visually and functionally in artist manner. Because this, I feel that there is a high possibility that I will develop and expand this project further in future.

Future opportunities and business opportunities

I believe that humans will begin to use more and more functional headpieces (masks, helmet, etc.) to exploit AI and IoT possibilities as a part of their daily lives. I feel that these headpieces will have also a fashion purpose which leads people to use them just even for their visual features. I think that headpieces which combine technology, modularity, and opportunity for self-expression in these times will be the winners of this market.

These beliefs reflect my final project, where I aim to design modular an functional smart helmet which users can use to express themselves. Currently, I feel that there lies a demand for a modular helmet making kit which customers can use to create unique helmet designs around their heads and modify them according to their needs to express themselves through the helmets with help of modular designs and embedded technologies like screens, LEDs and Arduino's.

There are multiple ways how these helmets could be sold, for example:

• Design and order model
  
Customers use their phones to create a 3D model of their head and upload it to helmet firm´s web page or app. From there, users could create or generate helmet frame that fits perfectly to their head. Then, the user could order these parts as a construction kit to their home or optionally as a full assembled helmet.


• Buy the basic kit, build your own
  
To easier the manufacturing, the helmet kit could be sold as a one standard package, that could still be used to create a frame for almost all different human head shapes. This could be achieved for example by using small triangles, which enables huge customizing possibilities.


• Build ready made helmet
  
Helmets are made as ready-made frames. The user can customize the helmet only through modular designs and embedded technologies.

Add-on-possibilities could be provided for example by:

• Sell Add-on possibilities to helmets
  
Provide a specific range of products like modular pieces and embedded technologies that can be added by the user to the helmet.
• Let users design their own add-ons
  
Design the helmet so that the users can create their own modular helmet pieces and embedded aspects and share them

Helmet could be manufactured for example by:

• Use Fablabs or Fablab-kind of producing spaces
  
• By subcontracting parts and/or assembling needed for example from China
  

From these, I feel that Design and order model, let users design their own add-ons, usage of Fablabs or Fablab-kind of producing spaces would be the best combination for the future. If I´m able to design this kind of helmet and/or helmet design software, I will consider taking it to market by creating a startup around it and by gathering investments through investors, funding, Kickstart and through other possibilities.

Licenses and sharing

Addition to future and business opportunities, I also considered different licensing possibilities. Many of the licenses listed on this week´s site are meant mainly for software purposes. For example, MIT license is a software license created at MIT. This license allows others to reuse licensed work with limited restriction which is that all of the licensed software have to include the MIT permission notice. Gnu general public licenses allow users to copy, distribute and modify the software as long as all the changes and dates in source files are tracked and as long as made modifications are available under the GNU GPL with appropriate install & build instructions.

However, currently, my project is mainly just a physical product with minimal software functionalities. FAB license could be used for my physical product to get my "project name" acknowledged and copyrights retained if my work is reused. However, I´m more interested about Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0, because it enables me to share my project for others to develop further when still getting a credit of my work if the project is developed further by someone else.

If my project would develop further and I would be able to make the helmet constructing kit that has business potential, I would consider other options. But for now, Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 is enough for me.

Slide and video

The first version of my final project slide:

Screenwrite for the video. I will add video later, probably few days before my presentation.