This past week was off to a great start: we decomposed our problem into different tasks that need to be completed. Chinwe will be working on User Experience testing, this includes creating surveys for users to fill. She will also be an assistant for CAD. On that note, Alvin is the CAD lead who creates models of our prototypes. He will be a Coding Assistant. I will be the coding lead. I am responsible for writing a code for whatever we want our device to accomplish. I will also help with electronics eg breadboarding, soldering and perf boarding. Matthew will be the electronics lead and will help with the user experience.
We also finalized our design criteria, created a PCC to rank our objectives. The meeting with the REMS ( Rice Emergency Medical Services was extremely helpful because now we have an understanding of what the user wants. We brainstormed more than 50 ideas but we did it by components and functions. Week 2 was definitely a great experience for our team.
Week 2 has been a period of growth, both for me and for our project. With my team, we finalized our design criteria; we brainstormed and evaluated potential solutions; and we realized we are not restricted to making the Steribox, well, a box. However, perhaps the most important growth came not in our design, but in our approach.
Something I’ve observed in all of my global health classes and experiences is the emphasis on a “horizontal” transfer of resources and ideas. It is an integral part of any approach to improving healthcare at the grassroots level. Accordingly, when we created our design goals and objectives, we wanted to make sure they were in line and came from those who will use our device, and thus “usability” became an important criteria. However, a “horizontal” approach cannot end here.
This week was marked by workshops and lectures about biosocial and human factors engineering, microaggressions and user-centric design. We also met again with our collaborators from Houston, Tanzania and Malawi. Through all of this, we started to see how a “horizontal” approach meant that all of our design criteria had to be inspired from those who will use the device. This meant “sustainability” should not just encompass locally sourced materials, but also the ease of maintenance and reproducibility. “Efficiency” was no longer the rate of sterilization of masks, but also the dosage of UV light which optimized recycling. Our entire perspective suddenly shifted as we began thinking beyond what we had in front of us.
Once we had our design criteria, we started brainstorming for potential solutions. Among these, we had everything from oil drums and frisbee-shaped UV lights to triangular prisms and UV curtains (credits to Vanessa for the drawings!).
We all hitchhiked off of each other and added unique perspectives to each idea. After brainstorming, we evaluated our solutions, again keeping in mind all of the lessons we had learned throughout the week. By the end, we had two main mechanical designs that we wanted to prototype. While we will be doing the majority of prototyping throughout week three, I’m going to leave a few sneak peeks at our initial low-fidelity prototypes (click the gifs to play them!). I’m excited for where this project is headed!
Let me preface this post by saying I am not an emotional person. I don’t cry at graduations or weddings, and you certainly won’t catch me shedding a tear over a movie. So when I nearly broke down in the middle of a workshop on ethical innovation by Magdah (one of our TA’s), I immediately recognized two things: one, global health innovation is both extremely important and extremely easy to mess up; and two, I am on exactly the path I need to be.
When I walked through the Sallyport my freshman year at Rice, I was determined to complete a Bioengineering degree so that I could work on medical devices as a career. I had the privilege to work on a catheter prototype with Biomedical Engineering graduate students at UT Austin during high school, and my excitement from that experience inspired me to pursue Bioengineering at Rice so that I could design medical devices.
As I reflected more on my personal motivations, I began to realize that in order to feel fulfilled in my career, I would need to have a direct impact on others. Something about the look on the face of someone I’m tutoring when a concept clicks, or the determination of working alongside Nicaraguans to build a house, gives me joy in a way that nothing else can. So this presented me with a dilemma: engineers often don’t get to work directly with their users or make an obvious impact on the population. Medical devices are extremely important and lifesaving, but so often the engineers who create it aren’t able to see the impact of their work.
I then stumbled upon the Global Health Technologies program at Rice, which combined my interest in working with Nicaragua and other low Central American countries with my Bioengineering studies. Fast forward 2 years, and I’m now a Rice 360 intern. Yes, I’ve been very excited about the practical experiences I would gain here–the engineering design process, prototyping, international communication, and much more–but I didn’t truly think about the global health aspect of the internship until Magdah’s workshop.
During the discussion, we focused on the example of the Roundabout PlayPump, a clever but misguided project which sought to facilitate clean water access for South African families. Although the children initially enjoyed playing on the pump, eventually they lost interest and the brunt of the pumping work fell on the mothers who, according to Dr. Taylor, described the experience as “humiliating” and “degrading.” In fact, so strong was the failure of the PlayPump that the word itself became taboo in the country.
What went wrong? The engineers working on the project were capable, intelligent, and inventive. They had no malicious intentions, but simply suffered from a case of design mismatch. As we’ve learned in our workshops, it is very important to keep the user at the forefront of the design process, since they will be the ones interacting with the technology. However, the PlayPump disregarded the desires of the actual users, the mothers who would carry the water back to their homes, and relied on children to fuel the pump instead. Since PlayPumps replaced existing pumps, these mothers were forced to use the merry-go-round themselves, which was neither dignified nor easy.
This brings me to the first lesson: although brilliant engineers can come up with a promising solution to a major problem, it is so easy for mindsets of colonialism or heroism to get in the way. Humility is vital to the design process: no one knows the need for a technology better than the population who needs it. In designing a solution without heavily and repeatedly involving this population, mistakes–such as the PlayPump–can occur.
My second lesson hit me like a ton of bricks. In feeding off of the passion of Magdah, of Dr. Taylor, of all of the interns in the room, I began to feel restless and jittery. For the first time in a while, I felt uncontainable excitement about a cause. I realized that I was exactly where I needed to be. Yes, I know, I know–that sounds like a line from the end of a Disney channel original movie, but experiencing this much passion took me back to the roots of my anticipated engineering career. Although I enjoy engineering design, my deepest motivation rests on the fact that I need to use my life to make an impact on others. And through ethical global health-centered engineering, I get to do just that.
So, to recap: the need for ethical designers is very present in our evolving world. As we grow in technological advancement, we need to avoid the temptation to place ourselves as the heroes of the story. In my future as an engineer, I hope to keep the target population involved in the design process. And, once COVID-19 is under control, I can’t wait to travel and work directly with the people of Malawi, of Tanzania, of Nicaragua, and so much more.
Thank you for making it to the end of this blog (sorry! I get verbose when I’m excited). I hope that you were able to get a clearer idea of what motivates me to be a Bioengineer, and are able to carry a bit of my enthusiasm with you 🙂
Team Petri-FI began this week with a mission and a strong attitude. On Monday, we would get to see the previous Minicubator prototype, and later that afternoon we would meet with a member of the freshman design team, Moonrat, who would help us become familiar with his team’s project. On Monday, all of our documents and thoughts about the previous prototypes would merge with reality, and the long transfer of wisdom from the previous teams would begin.
Typically, every team faces roadblocks at some point in a project. Most of the time, they occur somewhere around the middle or the end, when disorganization lowers the threshold of bad luck. For our team, the roadblock was just a few days into our project, and only moments after we received the Minicubator prototype. First, we noticed some heat damage on the insulation layer, where the foam had expanded out of the confines of the incubator. The prototype was clearly not stored in its completed form, so some assembly was required to connect the battery, Arduino board, and the incubation chamber together. We plugged in the embedded heating pads and thermometer as best we could to the printed circuit board, plugged everything into the battery, and flipped the switch.
Magic smoke trailed out of the circuit board, and we could immediately smell the consequences.
While some of us were calm, others of us looked at each other, not knowing whether we had completely destroyed every last speck of the Minicubator prototype, or if we had merely damaged the Arduino or PCB. We quickly realized a potential point for a short to occur between our wires, so we applied liberal amounts of electrical tape and reconnected the battery. This time, the screen lit up with the current temperature and some incubation options! The heaters refused to turn on, and there was visible damage to the PCB, but we were somewhat relieved to see the Arduino powered on with a working interface.
Later that day, we met with an enthusiastic member of the Moonrat freshman design team (not Minicubator), who gave us incredible clarity when thinking about the potential for a thermos incubator design. Their previous design worked in a fairly large thermos, and it had some rough spots in the user experience. However, we were happy to know that this was an area in which our team could make considerable improvements, especially with the knowledge and progress that their team had already made.
Following the Process
A colorful board of brainstorming.
Throughout the week, we continued to attend workshops that highlighted the steps of the Engineering Design Process. Fantastic speakers helped us in areas such as defining design criteria, brainstorming, and objectively evaluating solution ideas. It was easy to get lost in the messy timeline of previous incubator projects, but returning to the design process gave our team a clear direction for moving forward. During the week, Team Petri-FI was able to define useful criteria and start brainstorming partial ideas for our design, all the while troubleshooting the technical problems we encountered earlier in the week.
A wonderful highlight of this week was “Morning Standup” at 10:30 each day. These were short discussion sessions with everyone from the internship. Here, each team has the floor to discuss their recent progress, express any challenges they’ve encountered, list their plans for the rest of the day, and ask questions to any other teams. This time is designed to allow teams to learn from each other as we make progress on our own projects, and offer help to each other. After a year of online classes and limited contact with other people, this type of interaction is incredibly satisfying. Whereas online classes and events create the impression that I am working on everything completely alone, morning standup allows me to see other people (in-person!) struggling and working through difficulties of their own. I am honestly getting emotional writing about this, because it means so much to be able to empathize with others, and receive sympathy when we endure our own challenges.
High Ground
A fitting summary of this week would be “modeling.” We are still learning about the challenges of maintaining temperature in our chamber while keeping our battery small, so we designed a spreadsheet of electrical values and heat transfer parameters to help us estimate the power consumption of our incubator. We have used this to design small tests of different heating chambers, which will help us to evaluate some of our solutions and purchase an appropriate battery. When we struggled to test the previous Minicubator prototype, we grabbed a breadboard, and we followed the guidance of the team’s documentation to recreate the circuit ourselves, with wires galore. Since we haven’t been able to test code on the Arduino, I have had time to familiarize myself with the Minicubator code, add comments, and prepare to quickly test code when we get the system working again. Essentially, when we have encountered difficulties, we have spent time gaining the high ground on our problem. From research to brainstorming to breadboarding, we have prepared ourselves for the moment that we make a breakthrough.
The new breadboard, created using Minicubator’s circuit design.
The “magic smoke” incident may yet have been a blessing in disguise. It has encouraged us to take a more objective, distant approach to solving our problem. It has given us time to brainstorm improvements upon previous designs, and it has also forced us to learn more about the Arduino’s code and circuit board. Small adjustments to our team’s plans have guided us to a mindset of innovation rather than immediate construction. Ultimately, we are now in a much better position to make modifications to the circuit, battery, or components. Additionally, we are more than ready to perform heat transfer tests on multiple insulated chambers, once we get the breadboard working. During this internship, I hoped that I would gain some experience with electrical systems, and I have already learned so much from my teammates and other individuals. We are extremely fortunate to have the guidance of wonderful faculty and members of the Rice community who have helped us so far, and we are excited for our progress in the next few weeks.
Wow, I can’t believe another week has already passed and that we are over one-third done with the internship! This week was busy, but also very exciting. One of the first things we did was come up with a team name – we decided upon Now UV Me, Now U Don’t! In the beginning of our week, we spent quite a bit of time continuing to research aspects of the project, specifically materials which we could use in constructing our physical device. Figuring out which materials are available locally has been a big challenge for our team, and has demonstrated the importance of communicating with our clients/partners, as they have the best sense of what is and is not feasible for their settings.
As we wrapped up the majority of our research, our team also began to define our design criteria. Once our design criteria were defined, we used a Pairwise Comparison Chart (PCC) to compare the importance of the design criteria against one another and rank them in order of importance. Our final design criteria, based on the major goals outlined by our clients last week, include (from most to least important):
Maximum efficiency of sterilization
Maximum sustainability of power
Maximize sustainability of materials
Maximize usability
Maximize longevity
Maximize portability/mobility
Minimize cost of manufacturing
Overall, while the criteria themselves were fairly well-outlined from our initial interviews and research, the hard part was coming up with quantitative goals for each one. For example, what defines a material as “sustainable,” and how do you quantify how sustainable it is? We had many long discussions within our team and with our TAs and mentors in order to solve these issues.
One of the parts of the week that I considered most exciting with regards to our team’s progress was brainstorming ideas for our solution. Not only was it fun to come up with and share my own ideas, but it was also very inspiring to hear my teammates’ ideas; I found it fascinating to see how many different approaches we were each able to think of, and how many great solutions we were able to come up with by combining these approaches. Perhaps even more fun was the fact that, after using screening and scoring matrices to narrow down our ideas, we began making low-fidelity prototypes for our two highest-scoring ideas.
Prototype 1 (“Carl”):
This prototype is based off of a design which will ultimately use a 55 gallon oil drum (represented by the cylindrical trash can) as the base/shell, and which will contain a removable frame inside which holds layers of mask-holding rings and UV lights. The frame is attached to a lid, so that when the lid is lifted, the frame can be removed. Though the use of the oil drum will make this device very convenient, the biggest challenge will be finding a way to take the frame all the way out of the device easily (given the height of the oil drum) to replace the masks.
Prototype 2 (“Geraldine”)
This prototype, unlike the first design, is in a box-shape (which will likely ultimately be made of sheet metal). Once again, there are layers of UV lights and mask-holding frames. However, for this prototype, the lights are fixed, and just the mask holders can be taken in and out of the box. This would allow for very easy mask replacement.
Overall, I’m very proud of my team’s progress this week! In the coming days, we will continue finalizing our low-fi prototypes, working through some possible solutions to current issues with them, and potentially starting some preliminary usability testing. We will also discuss our solutions with our international clients to get their feedback.
Non-Project Reflections
Not only did our team have a busy week working on our project, but we also attended a number of extremely impactful workshops. Associate Dean Catherine Clark gave us two very particularly engaging and memorable workshops, one on having difficult conversations and one on microaggressions. The difficult conversation workshop was something that I think will almost certainly prove to be useful to me in the future. I am inherently very non-confrontational, and while this isn’t necessarily always a bad thing, it can also prevent me from advocating for both myself and others. Associate Dean Clark touched on the importance of difficult conversations and provided us with a number of strategies for engaging people in them, which I am excited to try in the future. Furthermore, her workshop on microaggressions was definitely very eye-opening. She showed us many videos and gave us numerous examples of microaggressions, all of which were simultaneously unintentional and extremely harmful. It’s scary to think that we all have such ingrained biases that, even if we are completely well-intentioned, we can easily say something that deeply hurts others. However, I think by learning to recognize these microaggressions, I will hopefully be able to stop myself from committing them; by learning to recognize my biases (even if I can’t completely eliminate them), I can hopefully stop myself from acting on them.
Furthermore, workshops by Jake Johnston (Rice 360 technology team) on designing for usability and by Magdah (one of our TAs) on a Biosocial Approach to Engineering highlighted many important considerations to be made during the engineering design process which may often be overlooked. I think the lessons I took away from these workshops will be important on my current project, especially the importance of considering the context in which you are designing and being sure to talk to and interact with users throughout the entire design process. This may be slightly difficult given our current remote environment and inability to interact with our users in-person, which means our team will have to be very consciously aware of connecting with and involving users as much as possible remotely.
It’s been quite a busy week here on Team Petri-FI. Our second week was spent mostly familiarizing ourselves with two previous prototypes. One device is from a previous freshman design team. It consists of a massive thermos with all the electronics stored inside. The other prototype, nicknamed the Minicubator, uses a 3D printed box. Unfortunately, we had to rip apart the model in order to examine the electronics.
The remains of the Minicubator.Thermos, with pen for scale.Inside of thermos, containing electronics.
Even more unfortunately, when we tried testing the Minicubator’s electronics, we shorted out the PCB. A PCB is a very small, condensed circuit board, about the size and shape of a credit card. Since we found out that the shortest time to order a new PCB is 18 business days (they have to be made custom) and we have about that many days left in our internship, we took drastic measures and recreated the PCB with a breadboard:
Our breadboard and associated wires. The PCB is the green rectangle in the bottom left.
One of my teammates put in all those wires by hand – go Nancy! Now to debug it . . .
After we observed these prototypes, we set our sights on our own design. As a team, we’ve spent a few hours brainstorming ideas for all the different components, such as heating mechanism, type of heating chamber, and how the user will be able to interact with collected data. One of the rules of brainstorming (yes, there are rules) is that wild ideas are encouraged. Here’s a particularly wild one: this awesome heated lunchbox. While the size and lack of extended battery life render this product unfit for our purposes, you have to admit it would be pretty cool to boil spaghetti inside your lunchbox while you’re in class.
Introducing the LunchEAZE. Source: luncheaze.com
The last update for this week regards the UI (user interface). We’ve already decided that our interface will be a small screen with three buttons – up, down, and OK. Now we have to determine how those buttons will be used to navigate through the program. Even though our device doesn’t really have all that many functionalities – basically just to set the temperature, set the time, start and stop the incubation period, and see data – it took quite a while and a lot of thought to plan each screen out. There were only eight screens to design, but we worked for three hours on just drawing out what we want!
Our flowchart for the functionality of the UI.
Team Petri-FI’s next steps are to write a program in Python that can replicate the UI functionality for others to complete usability testing on. This will give us feedback on what works and what is confusing about our layout. We’ll also continue to work on scoring our brainstormed ideas by how well they fit each of our design criteria. Once we do that, it’s go for prototyping our very own solution.
Content warning: My project deals with pediatric sexual abuse. Please take care of yourself and feel free to forgo reading any parts of this blog.
After concluding our problem definition and brainstorming last week, my team dove into design this week! On Monday, we made the (long and incredibly hot) trip to the Bioscience Research Collaborative (BRC) located in the Texas Medical Center. Here we met with Yajur, a graduate student working on LUCIA at Rice 360. LUCIA, a model that allows physicians to practice cervical cancer screenings, has many similar aspects (and a few key differences) to our pediatric pelvic model. Yajur was incredibly helpful, giving us a full overview of how LUCIA works. He also made many useful material recommendations for synthetic skin, and we even visited the lab where they housed some of the skin. Our visit was incredibly beneficial as we moved into brainstorming this week, and we also got to experience the state-of-the-art BRC with its jaw dropping views.
Left: Here is an older LUCIA model. Right: The base of the newest LUCIA model. Users can switch out the cervix using the spring loaded tube. The skin used in the model is also pictured.
The view from the BRC! So excited to take classes here the next 3 years!
Next, it was time to define our design criteria. Since our project is starting from the ground up, we had no preexisting criteria to modify. As a result, our team spent a decent amount of time Monday and Tuesday discussing which criteria we should include. Additionally, since our model’s overall goal was to increase user confidence in conducting pediatric pelvic examinations, we found it hard to quantify some of the design criteria. Because so many criteria were subjective, we came up with innovative ways to evaluate whether criteria were met, using techniques such as picture comparison or user-defined scales.
After laying out our initial thoughts on design criteria, we had a client meeting with Ms. Harris, where she confirmed that our criteria were appropriate and encompassed her wishes for the project. She also added the design constraint (criteria the design MUST meet, or else it fails!) of a sanitizable model, given the increased focus on sanitization due to the pandemic. Now that our design criteria were finalized, we ran a pairwise comparison chart (PCC) to rank our design objectives. By completing the PCC, our team has constraints and ranked objectives that will inform the design of our pediatric pelvic model.
Design Criteria
Target Value
Safety/Non-Toxicity
Score of ≤ 1 on US Hazardous Materials Identification System (HMIS)
Sanitizable
Must be able to wipe with Clorox wipe and/or alcohol-based sanitation supplies
User Confidence
Pre- vs. post-training comfort increases ≥ 30% (if applicable) after 3 uses based on a scale of 1-10*
Anatomical accuracy
Labia and hymen dimensions are within 1 standard deviation of mean for 1-2 year old (estrogenized), 2-5 year old (non-estrogenized) age ranges
Comparison of visual appeal of labia and hymen; ≥ 3.5 on a user-defined scale** of 1-5
Hymenal accuracy
Hymen moves properly when rotated; ≥ 4 on a user-defined scale*** of 1-5
Consists of at least 4 hymen varieties- annular and crescentic, with estrogenized and non-estrogenized versions of each
Rotation
Can rotate model from supine to prone in < 1.5 minutes
Durability
Labia must maintain elasticity and anatomical accuracy after stretching for at least 2 years
Ease of use
Can switch out versions in < 1 minute
Portability
Can be transported manually by 1 user
Our design constraints (top 2) and objectives (remaining criteria). Objectives are ranked according to PCC results.
Next up- brainstorming! On Wednesday, my team decomposed our problem into five main components- base, rotation mechanism, labia, hymen, and attachment. We then underwent individual brainstorming, jotting down our ideas on colored sticky notes. After we were done with this initial brainstorming phase, our team discussed all the ideas, which led to “hitchhiking,” or team members building off one another’s ideas. Soon, our team had 74 component ideas for our model! We then morphed our ideas into complete solution ideas for the pelvic examination model.
Left: Our whiteboard of 74 ideas! Right: Some of the complete solution ideas I came up with- pardon my art skills!
This brings me to Friday- by far the toughest day yet. We learned about Pugh screening and scoring matrices, two ways to objectively evaluate and narrow down solutions in order to decide which to prototype. As my team set out to run these matrices, we soon found we had many different images in our mind of the solutions. This led to lots of discussion, drawings, and explanations as we did our best to get on the same page. As we were discussing, we realized that most of our options for the base and rotation method were equally viable, thus making it difficult for us to evaluate them to find the “best” solution. Our model mostly depends on anatomical accuracy of the labia and hymen, and we plan to use Dragon Skin (a product often used in movie special effects and prosthetics) and a mold to create them. Any of the base ideas we were deciding between could’ve easily incorporated this labia and hymen. In the end, we came up with 5 solutions for the base and rotation. Our plan is to create low fidelity prototypes of the 5 bases and choose the one that seems the simplest or rotates the fastest.
Outside of project time, I enjoyed a number of engaging workshops. Jake Johnston, a member of the Rice 360 technology team, presented on usability and human factors. His presentation piqued my interest in human factors engineering. I have a desire to interact with the patients for whom I design, and the field of human factors is all about improving the user experience. Secondly, Magdah, one of the lovely TAs, facilitated a discussion about being a biosocial designer. As an engineer, this discussion opened my eyes to all of the social aspects and contexts that a biosocial designer must consider when creating solutions.
I also enjoyed spending more time with the other interns this week! We had a picnic on Tuesday with catered Local Foods, and it was great getting to interact with my colleagues outside of work. My team also continued to bond, and we took a Rice Coffeehouse trip one afternoon to get drinks and work. It was my first unmasked Coffeehouse experience, and it was equally exciting and odd to be back in a bustling coffeeshop! Anyways, I am looking forward to continuing work with my team next week as we start prototyping our pediatric pelvic models!
*Content warning: My project deals with pediatric sexual abuse. Please exercise self-care while reading.
Wow – it’s only been two weeks and I’ve already learned about and experienced so many aspects of the engineering design process! It’s astonishing that I’m already a third of the way to the end of the internship, and it’s been a whirlwind so far. We’ve accomplished so much….
And we’ve also had more than a few moments of frustration. We met with our client for the second time, finalized our design criteria, decomposed our project into components, compared and ranked our design objectives by importance, and we were finally ready to brainstorm and narrow down our options to the 1-2 ideas we would prototype. After several productive brainstorming sessions (and 74 sticky notes and a bunch of diagrams drawn on whiteboards and tables), we were really struggling to objectively evaluate our ideas. How were we supposed to compare our ideas if we didn’t even have a standard?
Ideas from one of our brainstorming sessions!Our design objectives & targets
All of the other teams this summer are iterating on existing projects, but we’re starting something from scratch. What were we supposed to use as a reference for comparison? LUCIA? And even more concerning, our design objectives are so dependent on user feedback (since it’s a training model) that it’s difficult to rank our ideas without having prototypes to work with.
After 4 hours of painstakingly trying to narrow down our list of potential things to prototype (2 hours of which were spent arguing about whether we wanted the model to rotate by flipping, twisting, or swiveling), we decided to make low-fidelity (really crude) prototypes of 4-5 different options as opposed to 1 or 2, and then narrow down from there:
“Flip”“Twist”“Swivel”
You’d think this would help us, right? Well… turns out that all of our prototypes were pretty equally functional! Though that’s definitely a good place to be in, we were really unsure how to move forward with a specific prototype. Eventually, we decided we’ll meet again with our client, show her our prototypes, and discuss her preferences.
Another update: we got the CAD designs for labia from the LUCIA project and 3D-printed a scaled-down version of the mold so that we can experiment with silicone rubbers and Dragon Skin for both the labia and hymenal tissue this week and next week! While we’re waiting to figure out how, when, and where to procure materials to experiment with for mimicking skin tissue, we’ll be working on making better prototypes of the base and frame of the model, and polishing the rotation mechanism.
If this past week has taught me anything, it’s about how important it is to slow down and really take the time to evaluate your design options before moving forward with building and prototyping. The leap between brainstorming and choosing solutions to prototype is an incredibly important step in the design process. And, sometimes, maybe you just need to ask the end user whether it’s best to flip, twist, or swivel.
I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a lone wolf, but I’m definitely an independent worker by nature. Years of struggling through group projects with unmotivated high schoolers taught me to trust no one’s work ethic besides my own. Asking for help or input was out of the question; if I wanted it done right, I had to do it myself.
As I’ve come to learn at Rice, this is not a sustainable mindset, especially for an engineer. And given that study groups were my saving grace during my sophomore year of college, I’m ever so slowly learning to trust and even lean on my teammates. This week, as we began our daily Morning Standup sessions (in which each team will share any progress or struggles encountered the previous day and ask for suggestions from their peers), I discovered the true meaning of the phrase, “two minds are better than one.”
During our research phase of the design process, we hit a wall in terms of finding materials for the device which are both durable and locally sourced in the countries we are designing for. After spending hours the week before racking our brains for ideas, I shared this struggle with the group during our inaugural Morning Standup and mentioned that any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
The response was immediate–several people asked questions to clarify our problem (What are the requirements of the structure? What effect does UV light have on materials?), then suggested that we talk to our international collaborators or consider pre-built structures such as containers used in shipping or construction. I was even approached afterwards by my peer Matthew, who mentioned using foil warming blankets to contain UV light within the device, and our TA Andrew, who pointed out that the Steribox does not have to be a box.
I was like a horse with its blinders removed. Of course–names are important, but they don’t have to define our device. Our team excitedly discussed a variety of new geometries: a cylinder, a triangular prism, or even a frame with UV-blocking fabric draped on top (I’ve shown a couple of brainstorming ideas below; please ignore my excited [messy] handwriting). We had spent so much time focused on the specifics of our project that we didn’t even think of zooming out and taking a different approach to the problem.
Now, five Morning Standups later, my teammates and I rack our brains for obstacles to share each time just so we can take advantage of the collective brainpower of the 24 interns, TAs, and instructors in the room. Moving forward, I’m excited to continue building my trust for my teammates and appreciating the value of humility and collaboration. Who knew that roadblocks could be the most promising part of the process?
***I thought I’d also take a moment to share some exciting news: after 1.5 weeks of deliberation, we’ve named ourselves Team Now UV Me, Now U Don’t! I’ll leave you with a team picture–not just any team picture, but a groundbreaking hybrid team selfie.***
Hi everybody! My name is Chinwe Appio-Riley and I am a new graduate. I studied Kinesiology, Engineering Design, and Global Health Technologies, and I am super excited to be here at Rice just a little bit longer by taking part in the SEED/Rice 360 internship this summer! This whole experience has been completely new to me as my background really isn’t on the bio side of things but I’m really enjoying it so far! I am a part of Team Breath Easy aka Breezy, along with my teammates Alvin, Alois, and Matthew. We are working to create a Bag-Valve Mask Monitor.
A BVM is an elastic bag with two one-way valves and a “mask” to fit over the patient’s nose and mouth. This is used by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and paramedics when a person is severely injured or sick that they have lost the ability to breathe on their own and is often used in emergency situations on-site. It is the simplest way to help a person in severe respiratory distress. It is not as good as the care you can get in an ICU, but it can save your life.
The problem is that it is possible to squeeze too hard and deliver too much air and damage the patient’s lungs. This is especially true if the EMT is highly stressed (which is common), or has pressed an untrained volunteer into service to help other, even more badly wounded, patients. Based on its work with flow sensors for emergency pandemic response ventilators, Public Invention had a simple idea: use a flow sensor to measure how much air is delivered and give guidance to the user. The idea is to have a machine that assists, either visually and/or auditorily, with the frequency and volume of pumping.
An ENGI 120 group has been able to produce a mid-fidelity prototype that we are iterating on. We need to make the device more portable, durable, and easy to use. I am specifically involved in the easy-to-use portion of the device due to my background in human-centered design and understanding of the human body. I am excited to implement what I’ve learned about Human Factors which is a scientific process to reduce human error, increase productivity, and enhance safety and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between a human and the thing of interest.
This past week, we have reviewed the beginning part of the engineering design process of contextualizing the problem and developing ideas for solutions. Additionally, we have engaged in workshops to aid in team dynamics and communication. I have found several of these exercises extremely useful and have put me in a reflective mindset to check my interactions with my teammates. I find that often I struggle to actively listen in lengthy and rambling dialogues and lectures. Often I want the discussion to get the point which results in me getting inpatient. Thus, my listening drops off. What I do to combat this is to keep an objective to try and understand what the individual is trying to say in order to rephrase back to them to make sure that we are on the same page. This keeps me more engaged and keeps the discussion more productive.
Another tool in keeping meetings on track that I am working to refine is the wonderful meeting agenda. We had a wonderful presentation from the RCEL team to review how to structure and organize team and client meetings. I used meeting agenda’s all the time in my capstone project during the school semester. Therefore, I am well acquainted with this concept, however, what was new was the idea to predict and take into account how long each objective will and should take to discuss. This way you can project how long a meeting might take in total.
Up next, the team and I are excited to engage in user interviews and finish creating design criteria and screening ideas so that we can jump into the prototyping phase.
