CircaLight is a Barrett Honors Thesis Project that was conducted through the Founder’s Lab Program in the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. A team of three students, each with different majors, came together to complete the project. Jackson Krug, Benjamin Sare, and Gabriel Zimm formed the team as part of Cohort 3 of the 2021-2022 Founders Lab Program. They are each pursuing bachelors degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Finance, and Business Administration, respectively. This diversity of schooling allowed them to approach this project from multiple, diverse perspectives. Due to their familiarity with sleep deprivation throughout college, the team chose to pursue a project centered around NASA’s Advanced Solid State Lighting System, which functionally mimics the changes in natural light that humans would typically experience on earth. This technology provides these same fluctuations to astronauts in space. A unique logo and branding were created for a potential product that would use this technology. Three different marketing strategies relating to this brand were developed and tested to achieve this project’s goal: determining the best prospective market for this technology. The three potential market areas we tested dealt with: general fatigue & lack of productivity, family sleep habits, and jet lag. Through our research, we found the most attractive market to be people who are looking to improve their sleep habits and productivity at home. Conversely, we concluded that while there is an audience for travel fatigue solutions, the market is not interested in this NASA technology.

In arid environments such as Arizona, agricultural producers are burdened by constraints placed on them by inhospitable weather and limited access to water and fertile soil when attempting to grow produce. Farms in the arid Southwest often have to build greenhouses to overcome such constraints; however, such greenhouses may be relatively space, water, and pesticide intensive and often have demanding maintenance needs and overhead costs. In addition, many current agricultural practices exhaust land resources disparagingly, leading to irreversible environmental degradation. In an effort to improve agricultural production for those limited by weather and resource constraints while simultaneously increasing sustainability in land, resource and pesticide use, we have created Valleyponics, a hydroponic growth services company centered around creating a minimal farming footprint. The company uses a consultative services approach, leveraging NASA Veggie Growth System Technology to provide solutions to large businesses by automating their agricultural production processes and minimizing resource use year-round. Valleyponics aims to cultivate consultative partnerships which will allow our clients, their communities, and the environment to flourish.

In 2020, all states and territories within the United States have at least 20% obesity rates among adults, with the state of Arizona specifically being between 30-35% of adults (CDC, 2021). Being overweight and having obesity are linked to increased risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, certain cancers, as well as other chronic conditions (NIH, 2018). The high percentage is partly due to the work environment in society, which has become increasingly sedentary with the rise of labor-saving technologies, like computers for example. As a result, sedentary jobs have increased 83% since 1950 (American Heart Association, 2018). Our proposed solution to this problem of people not getting enough exercise is Bet Fitness. Bet Fitness is a mobile app that utilizes social and financial incentives to motivate users to consistently exercise. The quintessence of Bet Fitness is to bet money on your health. You first create a group with your friends or people you want to compete with. You then put in a specified amount of money into the betting pool. Users then have to exercise for a specified amount of days for a certain period of time (let’s say for instance, three times a week for a month). Workouts can be verified only by the other members of the group, where you can either send photos in a group chat, link your fitbit/other health data, or simply have another person vouch that you worked out as proof. Anyone who fails to keep up with the bet, loses their money that they put in and it gets equally distributed to the other members of the party. According to our initial survey, this idea has generated much interest among college students.

In arid environments such as Arizona, agricultural producers are burdened by constraints placed on them by inhospitable weather and limited access to water and fertile soil when attempting to grow produce. Farms in the arid Southwest often have to build greenhouses to overcome such constraints; however, such greenhouses may be relatively space, water, and pesticide intensive and often have demanding maintenance needs and overhead costs. In addition, many current agricultural practices exhaust land resources disparagingly, leading to irreversible environmental degradation. In an effort to improve agricultural production for those limited by weather and resource constraints while simultaneously increasing sustainability in land, resource and pesticide use, we have created Valleyponics, a hydroponic growth services company centered around creating a minimal farming footprint. The company uses a consultative services approach, leveraging NASA Veggie Growth System Technology to provide solutions to large businesses by automating their agricultural production processes and minimizing resource use year-round. Valleyponics aims to cultivate consultative partnerships which will allow our clients, their communities, and the environment to flourish.

Party on Wall Street is a web-based video game developed by Maroon and Gold Game Studios. As an educational entrepreneurship video game, Party on Wall Street provides a refreshing and exciting new experience for the tycoons in society who want a little more of that entrepreneurial lifestyle. With proper research on customer demographics, Maroon and Gold Game Studio’s brand identity consists of a modern game with multiple use cases. With strong partnerships with multiple creatives and built from scratch game development, Party on Wall Street implements a fun, high intensity business competitive environment for players and students to engage in. This thesis consists of building an interactive experience through the use of AirConsole, a third party platform that hosts the game and allows players to join it by connecting to the same website on their mobile device. The primary user has access to hosting a game which can be casted to a larger screen, typically a television. When hosting a game, a room code is generated which can be typed in on the mobile device to connect to the game. When all players have joined the game, the host can initiate it. Players go through 6 rounds of pitch style investing presentations and have the opportunity to invest in other products with the ultimate goal of earning the most money. In the end, the game was successfully implemented, extensively user tested, and is under review by the AirConsole game team. Over the last year, the team successfully brought an idea through the entire product development process, learned to build a game in Unity, made practice of extensible testing and validation methods, and leveraged customer research and feedback to design a game that is ultimately both enjoyable and educational.

This thesis project is part of the W.P. Carey Founders Lab, a collaborative entrepreneurship track that gives students the opportunity to create a start-up business based on a list of given problems or technologies. The technology selected utilized a piece of NASA technology (U.S. patent application 20200193857) that combines mixed, virtual, and augmented reality (MR, VR, and AR) with biofeedback metrics to help athletes get in the zone. The goal is to use the technology during practice so athletes can be better prepared to combat performance anxiety during high-pressure situations. The NASA patent states that if the user’s brain activity, sweat, or heartbeat indicate that they are stressed while completing the activity, the device will make it more difficult for the athlete to complete their task. ITZ’s device increases the difficulty of hitting a target with a ball by obscuring the vision with augmented reality graphics. The visual obstacles will subside if the user’s brain activity metrics indicate that they have become more calm or focused. Due to circumstances outside of the team's control, a prototype was unable to be obtained, and the idea was based on the patent and supporting documentation provided after a meeting with NASA.