This entire week was devoted to my favorite stage of the engineering design process…PROTOTYPING!

We spent almost all morning Tuesday and Thursday at the Rec Center pool (shoutout to Susanna Leonard, head of Rice’s Aquatic Center, for letting us test there!) We made prototypes ahead of time, then brought some zipties, scissors, and extra pool noodles along so that we could adjust the prototype based on issues we identified while testing in the water. Straps were added and taken away, seat levels adjusted, and more floats were added where needed. We graduated from proof of concept prototypes all the way to a fully functional prototype. While the latest prototype does in fact work with both ourselves and Mortimer as test subjects, there are some key areas in need of improvement, mostly in the area of comfort.

After testing that last prototype we brainstormed possible solutions to these problem and decided to go ahead and create three prototypes with the adjustments we came up with so that we could see first hand how these adjustments compared to one another. We’ve found that actually building prototypes is the easiest way to solve any debate, as we could argue all day about how a particular solution might affect the design criteria…or we could just build it and see if the reality matches up with our expectations.  So, today we spent all day prototyping. Much to my joy, we finally got the sewing machines working and sped through creating the buckles and straps.

After all that hard work, we need some time to kick back and relax, so this Sunday we’re planning a joint American/Malawian independence day party (America’s independence day is July 4th, Malawi’s is July 6th). Then, on Tuesday, its back to work, work, work on our prototype.