CERVICAL CANCER PROJECT
This has been an awesome week working hand in hand with Karen and Mary on our project. so much has been done during the week, and loved the way thing have been lining up for the project.
just a brief description of the project, me and my team we are working towards developing a part of a cervical cancer screening model which is the cervix in four different stages of cancer, with the purpose of using it in the low resource areas to train health care practitioners in cervical cancer screening procedure. the main focus of the project is to demonstrate the color change of the cervix when its swabbed with acetic acid in the actual Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA) procedure and also make sure that the design is of low cost as possible suitable for these low resource areas.
On Monday we had the chance of visiting one of our clients working place at the LBJ Hospital with the aim to observe the VIA or any other related procedures and have a clear picture of how the actual cervix look like, so my team members went into the operation rooms with different patients being treated. prior to the visit me and my team members organised our goals for the visit, all went as planned except for the part that we also wanted to check out any existing models like ZOE model. the visit went well for us and it was really a learning experience on how to handle clients visits.
For the project we are also working with Emillie who is like our client and partner, and had a meeting with her on Wednesday which went well and exciting that we are on the same page in this project and she was really amazed with our progress in the research and the solution options we have developed so far.
so in general for our project this week we managed to do;
- Research on cervical cancer causes, signs, symptom, screening and treatment
- Research on existing screening methods basically PAP smear and VIA
- Client visit and meetings
- Developing Design criterion
- Pairwise Comparison chart
- Brainstorming for possible solutions
- Morph Charts for the design Blocks
- Screening the Design solution options
We have finally got a design solutions for the project The 3D painted Cervix with Heat Sensitive Paint for color change. So far we have started ordering materials to start Prototyping our first low fidelity prototype.
WORKSHOP
Now here is the exciting part of the week, doing some relaxing and very educative work, on Tuesday learnt using the Adobe Illustrate to design 3D objects, thanks to Mikaela our TA for making it easy to learn the package in a very short period of time and i managed to design a Housing for the Sound Sensitive Lamp that my workshop team mate Mary made herself.
The whole thing was really fun and finally getting to use the laser Cuter for the Housing it was Awesome!!!!!!
The second part of the Workshop was with Dr Wettergreen, we did the Surface Modification and Finishing were we learnt how to use different finishing tools both manual and powered tools. The workshop was great and we had to do all the activities that Dr Wettergreen pointed out like filing, using the Dremel and splay painting.
