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This week’s class discussion was about inputs and outputs. My product will definitely need both.

One topic we discussed I feel would be a great addition to my product is the voice recognition feature. This would add a great dimension to the refrigerator. This feature would let owners of this product ask questions like what is the caloric value of a certain item, or when it will expire. This would be good for those who might be visually impaired or to young to read to ensure food safety and to make sure they are receiving what they want.

To ensure that all items placed in the refrigerator are scanned and appropriately and accounted for, the product would need RFID. This Automatic Identification Technology will scan each item to log it into its memory. A passive RFID tag would be used because the items wouldn’t be more then 3 meters from the unit when the information needs to store. Because this isn’t really a very expensive way to scan data I think it will be a benefit to the product because it wont have to raise the price to much, making it affordable for more consumers.

One disadvantage to the RFID system that would affect this product would be incorrect reading of RFID tags. This problem might be able to be solved by really teaching the customers how to use the product, although this is not 100% preventable.