Team 33: Convertible High Heel Shoe

An Entrepreneaurial Senior Design Project in the Mechanical Engineering Department

Project Background

Women around the world experience severe foot pain when wearing high heels over long periods of time. High heels are also extremely uncomfortable for driving or dancing. But, women put up with pain and injury because they LOOK GOOD! The need is to give women an option of a convertible shoe without giving up one iota of fashion. The convertible shoe can be a flat shoe, transformed into a high heel shoe, and convert back to a flat shoe. It turns out it is NOT easy to do the engineering to accomplish the above goal. There are numerous patents on the subject and several commercial ventures have been tried but failed.

InNOLEvation Challenge

The inNOLEvation Challenge is a business model competition hosted by Jim Moran School of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University focused on identifying problems and potential solutions, building effective teams, and precisely defining the assumptions for a new venture, testing those assumptions in the field, and then pivoting based lessons learned. Team 33 finished in the Top 12.

Our Sponsor

Mike Devine is the Entrepreneur in Residence and an Adjunct Professor in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. Dr. Devine has a B.S. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, both from the University of Texas at Austin.