hello all,
Monday this week it was independence day for America.Went to see the fireworks and they were so beautiful plus we had lots of fun together.
#all smiles#
On Tuesday we were all fresh from the long weekend and we were back to project mode. The nylon opaque tube arrived then hence we adjusted the sewing elastic prototype by replacing the hypo tube with it.We also finished the accordion prototype, used the flexible nylon tube on it as well.
We tested both prototypes(whether working or not) above are the pictures of the two higher medium fidelity prototypes.
The accordion prototype was working quiet fine but on the rest position the fiber could hardly get to the original position. We suspected the length of the fiber optic or some friction in nylon.For the sewing elastic it acted like the accordion during our first test. We figured length of the fiber optic was not a problem, but either the length or width of the sewing elastic. So we adjusted both its length and width .It worked much better than the accordion.As we did the tests on one of us (Nathalie) by mimicking the contractions, just to see if the prototypes work.We figured our devices worked and would detect the changes but did not register any of our fake breathing as contractions because our threshold was a little lower and that is fine for now.
We had a meeting with our client Dr Carns .We showed her our prototypes both accordion and sewing elastic.We showed her how both are working,their pros and cons as of now.We also told her about having a belt instead of athletic tape or KT tape. She said we can test the two and see which one is better .Also she suggested that we test the response of the two prototypes iteratively. We have scheduled another meeting with her and Dr Suneet who can possibly have an idea on how much the belly stretches during the pregnancy contractions.We had workshop in the afternoon.We learnt about problem finding and scoping.We did a few exercises and it was related to the engineering design boot camp we had earlier when we started.Much difference was on the perspective we ought to have during problem understanding.We had to go through what our user goes through in order to understand the problem better. Hence we did a few exercises in groups of four and the exercises made my heart melt.
We all stained the tree house throughout the morning on Thursday as the picture shows. We brain stormed ideas on the belt attachment for our device hence we came up with a morph chart for the 8 valid ideas.The Velcro belt idea won and we cut out a piece of fabric for the belt. The belt was made today by Nathalie while the rest of us came up with the ideas for our boxes and how to attach the electronics to it.We worked on dimensions of the boxes 3D printed at least three boxes and improved the boxes after printing each one of them.Learnt how to come up with CAD using solid works today from my group members,it was really fun.
We had a meeting with Dr Matthew Wettergreen as his way of checking of our progress. Also he advised us that we should have a consistent testing tool like an inflating ball apart from testing on our non pregnant tummies. So we ordered one online. It is his birthday today though (Happy Birthday Dr Wettergreen !!! ).
Its been a wonderful week am looking forward to next week we hope to come up with our final prototype after the tests we are to perform from our test plan.