Hello everyone! It’s hard to believe that I have ended my 2nd week of the internship. It is incredible to think about how fast time flies when you are engrossed in whatever you are doing. This week, my team and I took time to think through the logistics of our project in preparation for low-fidelity prototyping during week 3.

At the beginning of the week, we developed a set of design criteria for our project. The design criteria are the targets and goals that will define the characteristics of our design. We developed these goals by first defining the basic user needs of our project such as safety, ease of use, durability, appearance, etc. We then categorized these user needs by whether they were constraints and objectives. For the more quantitative user needs, we developed quantitative target values for each criterion, and for the qualitative objectives, we designed user-defined scales.

After developing our design criteria, we then took our project idea and decomposed it into parts. Specifically, we first broke the design idea into the joints that we have to model. We then further decomposed each joint into the movements that they have to properly simulate for the Ballard Assessment. Building our design criteria and decomposing our project idea into the specific components/details helped me develop an idea of the scope of our project and the aspects that need to be addressed. A concern that I had during week 1 was just how big and complex our project looked from the outside. As someone who does not have any sort of engineering background, the idea of having to design a model that can perform these complicated physical motions was overwhelming, but having the opportunity to firmly establish what this model needs to have characteristically and what are the various components that need to be worked on was really integral in me being able to understand what this project truly entails.

The last design task we did at the end of the week was brainstorming all of the possible solutions to our problem. While my team and I already had a clear idea about what the prototype would look like, it was really refreshing to be able to sit down and just come up with ideas even if we knew that a lot of them would not come to fruition. Something that I sometimes find myself struggling with is how narrow-minded I can be when it comes to problem-solving. When I encounter a problem, I get into the habit of putting all of my effort into the solution that comes to me first rather than assessing the situation at hand and taking my time to develop a well-thought-out solution. Forcing myself to come up with multiple alternatives to our mannikin idea helped keep my mind open.

While my team and I made a lot of progress in the design process, several highlights for us were the various workshops that we participated in throughout the week. I had a lot of fun learning how to breadboard circuits and work with 3-D printing software in the design workshops. Even though I don’t see myself heavily utilizing these skills within my actual project, it was great to just be able to sink my feet into territory I have never approached and even apply the physics knowledge that I learned in the classroom. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the professional workshops on engaging in difficult conversations and addressing microaggressions. Effective interpersonal communication is a skill that I have struggled with for quite some time, so it was great just to be able to have the time to walk through how to approach difficult professional situations.

Overall, I am really proud of the progress my team and I have made within and outside the engineering design process. Since we have been focused on researching the problem context and working out the logistics of our project, we haven’t encounter a lot of challenges, but I do anticipate barriers in our progress during week 3 as we start to do our low-fidelity prototype. I am looking forward to updating everyone on my team’s progress in the upcoming week!

 

Take care,

Lam