At the halfway point in the internship, there are varying versions of a similar thought floating in my head: it’s only been three weeks, it’s already been three weeks, there are still three weeks left, but there are only three weeks left. It seems like just yesterday I was writing my first blog about my excitements and reservations as the internship began. Had just met my teammates and we were just beginning to gel. We had only scratched the tip of the iceberg that is the engineering design process (that’s still probably the case), and we looked forward to the journey to come. Three weeks in, we have done so much that it’s hard to believe that it’s only been three short weeks. We have heard from some incredible people during our workshops, and we have had great team meetings in which we really worked through certain aspects of our projects. Going into the final three weeks, I’m confident that I couldn’t have a better team, that I are doing meaningful work, and that I am learning so much from this experience.
On Monday we learned from our TAs Aubry and Hannah about ways to effectively present on and write about a project. They gave us some incredible advice and showed us some of the tools that will allow us to effectively and efficiently display our ideas to stakeholders who may want to get involved in our project. This workshop also helped me to identify ways that we had not considered interacting with stakeholders. We realized as a group that we needed to further refine the groupings that we had assigned to our stakeholders. Each stakeholder is going to be connected to our project in a different way and is therefore going to be especially interested in unique aspects of our project. A clinician may care mainly on a face shield’s comfort of use, while the hospital administration cares about how many times they can be used and how much they cost. The workshop helped us to realize this and we were able to come up with a more clear and defined stakeholder map as seen below.
Tuesday was Election Day in Malawi, so we did not have a workshop. However, we did meet as a team. Not all of our group members were present for last weekend’s team bonding exercise, so we did it again with all four of us plus Hope (our TA). We had a great time playing the game and spent a lot of time laughing. We must have talked about Marvel superheroes for at least half an hour. It was great to get to know my teammates better and to laugh and enjoy the virtual equivalent of hanging out with them.
On Wednesday, Dr. Wayne Decker joined us for an impassioned workshop on Energy Poverty. He inspired me with his drive, vision, and knowledge on a subject that he desperately wanted to improve. While the bulk of his presentation was on Productive Use of Energy, he also taught us quite a bit on sustainability and supplying energy, jobs, industry, etc. to rural areas. His energy and his work were an example to us that working on projects that we are passionate about has the potential to significantly improve the quality of life for many people. Finally, he gave us advice on tips for being happy and successful in the future. This stuck with me, as it showed that he not only cared about our projects, but that he cared about us and our happiness as people. I will be trying to implement his pieces of advice as best I can in the future.
Dr. Bond and Professor Million lead the way in a workshop about Needs Finding on Thursday. I learned that there is more to a need than meets the eye. There are multiple dimensions behind a need, and incorporating all of these dimensions into a solution usually provides the most effective and long lasting results. We went over the techniques of needs finding which center around background research, interviews, and observation. While this internship is heavily focused on the research and interviews portion of needs finding, we are unfortunately not able to conduct observations given the current situation. It is difficult because observation is likely the most “pure” form of needs finding, but we are making do with what we’ve got (and looking forward to possibly conducting observations of our own next summer). On Thursday we also had a team meeting with Dr. Taylor. It was great to talk to her about our progress through the internship and about our team dynamic.
On Friday, we had a workshop by Dumisani Kaliati in which he gave us great insight on what it means to meet the user/customer where they are. He is doing great work with his company to find the specific needs of their target users and to educate them on exactly how his intervention would function to help them. We were also able to ask him about the face shields that his company has been working on which was extremely helpful.
During the weekend, our wonderful TAs put on yet another fantastic team bonding activity. It was a virtual scavenger hunt. We had to first solve a riddle to which the answer was a household item. We then had to sprint to that item in our house, take a picture of it or with it, and send it to the group with the name of the item before the other teams did. Let me tell you, this was a high stress and intense game. For much of the competition, my teammates were the brains and I was the legs as my track training paid off and allowed us to send in our answers quickly. We all had such a great time, again filled with laughs and great memories. I can’t wait to see what the next half of this wonderful internship holds!
Till next time,
Andrew Abikhaled