Today the groups had their first prototype evaluation. The roof group sketched their entire system on the white board so that Dr. Saterbak could easily see how all of the components of the system fit together. We learned the sensors originally ordered were volume dependent which would not be good for the roof (since the roof has different size trays), and so new sensors had to be ordered. A large part of prototyping is testing components to see if they actually work the way you want them too. Sometimes they don’t, and you have to start over and try something else. The group still has electronics that need to be connected to the computer, and so the last weeks of school will be devoted to synthesizing all of the components together.
Prototype Evaluation
March 22nd, 2011 by cpp2Prototyping
March 22nd, 2011 by lam4The groups finally have gotten their hands dirty as they begin prototyping in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK). It’s amazing how designs will succeed or fail once you starting modeling them. From drill presses to k’nex, floaties to cardboard, the room is teeming with exitement . The forearm team has a set of accelerometers they’re experimenting with. The wheelchair group is experimenting with three dimensional gears, and the surrey and roof teams are continuing to refine their prototypes as the designs are finally starting to become a reality.
pictures of prototyping, click to enlarge them:
Team Obstacles and Progress
March 17th, 2011 by raj2It has been absolutely inspirational to see the change in mood in the room now that the students are actually putting their plans into action. However, I think today many groups hit their first obstacle when they realized that the solutions might be more difficult to create than previously thought.
For example, the surrey group realized that their permanent fold out box actually caused discomfort to passengers. The team came together with the apprentice leaders and faculty to evaluate and then decide to redesign the storage space to be removable. This is only one of the several examples of how the students have actually learned the importance of a reiterative prototyping design process.
In the team meetings the groups have also began evaluating what different materials, structure, calibration requirements, and hinges the final design might require.
Testing Design Solutions
March 15th, 2011 by Joey SpinellaIt’s easy to think up of a design. But how do you test it? As with all products, the three factors of speed, cost, and quality have a mutually exclusive relationship. As they say:
“You can have it fast and good, but it won’t be cheap.”
“You can have it good and cheap, but it won’t be fast.”
“You can have it fast and cheap, but it won’t be good.”
For testing design solutions, we want our products to be only good enough to prove our concept. Therefore, we strive to make our prototypes fast and cheap. But it is always a jarring step to go from the drawing board to trying to materialize some semblance of the desired product.
I enjoyed watching the wheelchair and forearm groups start their prototyping processes. The forearm group split into two subgroups to focus on two different designs: a mechanical rotation device, and an electronic accelerometer device. In the very first day, the mechanical subgroup created a cardboard prototype of one of their designs. But the prototype didn’t last long – not because it wasn’t good enough, but because half-way through they decided they wanted to change the design. In this case, it was beneficial that the team avoided the pitfall of making their first prototype “too good.” The wheelchair group also had a very important start to their prototyping process: discovering an idea didn’t work. On paper, the team was convinced that their “piston” idea would be an effective design, but once they constructed a make-shift proof of concept, it became clear that the piston design did not work in the way they thought it did. In the end, the wheelchair group went back to the drawing board to generate more ideas. For both groups, the prototyping process was very successful!
ENGI 120 Student Presentations
February 24th, 2011 by raj2
After the apprentice leaders met with Dr. Volz to learn how to coach presentations, we were prepared to watch the ENGI 120 students with a keen eye for common presentation faux paus. These included everything from “ums,” tense body language, a “question” or “?” slide, and how the students fielded questions.
I was pretty confident after watching the student’s practice presentations that these ENGI 120 students would do far better than we had previously imagined freshman students would do. And I have to say, I was still impressed with the presentations the day of. The students were eloquent, clearly enthusiastic, and yet professional. I was impressed with their designs and coolness on the spot when it came to technical questions. The surrey group had even constructed a little model to better explain the different design options.
However as newly trained coaches, we were noticing and writing down comments on possible areas of improvement for the students including talking speed and pauses.
Overall, we were impressed with the extraordinary group of freshman engineering students in ENGI 120. We were especially impressed with how engaged the presenter’s peers were during the different student presentations. Many of the students asked their peers great specific, technical questions at the end. I guess our skit on good and bad questions paid off!
Oral Report Coaching
February 22nd, 2011 by Joey SpinellaOne of my favorite aspects of this course is not only getting to learn about how to do things, but also getting to learn how to teach things. This is definitely the case with coaching the freshmen on their oral reports. As a junior mechanical engineer, my experience in giving oral reports is still quite limited. Naturally, before this course, I never had an opportunity to practice coaching others on their oral report skills. But this is exactly the situation we were in for class on Tuesday.
Dr. Tracy Volz helped us to develop these skills. We watched some example senior design presentations to practice watching for different aspects and writing careful notes of what was important. We also role played giving feedback on writing samples to make sure we had a good balance of encouragement and constructive criticism. One thing I discovered was that I tend to be a little too up-front with my observations, often leading to discouragement on the part of the recipient. This was something I was careful to avoid in giving feedback to the Forearm Group on Tuesday.
Listening to the Forearm Group present, I was very impressed by how well prepared they were. But no matter how good their presentation was, I still was able to think of many things to comment on. It was a challenge to be methodical in sharing what I thought was important while also being careful to present only as much as would be beneficial for their team to improve their presentation. Over all, I felt good about the encouragement I was able to give the team, and was thrilled by how receptive the team was. It is empowering to step into such a leadership role in this class and see the students listen so carefully to the things I say!
Oral Presentations and AL Skit
February 17th, 2011 by ab18One of the final lectures the students of ENGI 120 received before their mid-semester presentations were due was one on how to prepare and give oral presentations and how to ask constructive questions after a presentation. This entire lecture was a tag team effort between Dr. Saterbak, Dr. Volz and all the Apprentice Leaders.
The first portion of the lecture was handled by Dr. Saterbak who explained the CATME evaluation system to the students. This technique has been used by the teams to evaluate each of the members and will contribute to their overall grade.
The next part of the lecture consisted of Dr. Saterbak presenting to the class about how to design a good presentation for a design proposal. This included the strategies required to make an effective presentation and also how to conduct oneself during a presentation.
The final part of the presentation was an interesting Skit on how to ask good questions, done by the ALs. We gave a very short presentation on a sandal that detected metal and provided product descriptions. This was followed by the remainder of the ALs asking a variety of questions, both good and bad, and the presenting ALs showing the students how to answer questions politely and effectively.
How to be an Affective Leader
February 10th, 2011 by lam4I think if I knew how to be an affective leader, I could likely sell a lot of books, and make a lot of money as a speaker. However, that is one of the greatest parts of the ENGI 316 course, that we are not only teaching but also learning leadership. We all came into the course with the preconceived notion that we were selected for our leadership capabilities, and thus set out to lead the freshman into greatness on their projects. This is a great set up for a lesson in humility. It’s easy to say that my shortcomings as a leader have been because the group isn’t responding to my style of leadership. However, learning to be a capable of multiple styles of leadership will make me a better leader in the future. Therefore, I am finding myself stretched to explore other styles, a position fitting for the mission of RCEL.
Learning how to be an affective leader has come largely from the Shriner’s AL’s interaction with the freshman teams. I can mainly attest to my own interaction; but, I have found that I approach leadership in a lead from behind method. I try to direct the team, through veiled comments such that at the end they feel they have arrived all on their own, when in reality I was guiding all along. However, with one of our groups, it has become evident that this is not affective. For example, the groups were encouraged to designate a facilitator for the day. However, the facilitator for this one group did not adequately insure that everyone’s voice was being heard. So, I stepped in and asked for the opinions of different group members throughout the course of the meeting. The result was that I modeled what a facilitator should do, but the group (and especially the acting facilitator of the group) learned nothing. In discussing the situation with our faculty mentors, I learned that in that situation I needed to explicitly say that I was modeling the position of facilitator. It is difficult for me to approach leadership so explicitly. However, it is also important that we all learn how to lead in different ways and different situations.
Methods to Evaluate Solutions 1
February 8th, 2011 by cpp2It can be really fun and easy to throw out many ideas during the brainstorming process regardless of how practical they are. The topic of this class was the hard part: evaluating these ideas to determine the best design choice. Dr. Saterbak described two different design evaluation tools. She also stressed that the brainstorming and evaluation process is an iterative process. When evaluating solutions, new and potentially better ideas often come to mind.
The first evaluation tool is a morph chart. This chart organizes the brainstorming ideas into solutions for specific functions and attributes. The best combination of design solutions can be chosen from the possibilities. The second is a priority checkmark matrix that evaluates the solutions based on their ability to meet the design criteria and satisfy the constraints. The design criteria are rated based on a checkmark system; therefore, the solutions that meet highly rated design criteria receive the highest scores. Dr. Saterbak ended the lecture by stressing that these evaluation tools are only valuable and useful if supporting data dictates the evaluation numbers.
Apoorv and I worked with the OEDK roof after the lecture. We discussed the brainstorming memo and talked in more detail about how the sensors would connect to the control system. Some of this may require some programming skills, or the system can potentially be designed with on/off switches. More evaluation tools will be discussed on Thursday, and then the groups will turn in a memo using these evaluation matrices.
Brainstorming Class
February 3rd, 2011 by raj2
Ideas from the OEDK group's brainstorm session
True to the subject matter of the class, Dr. Saterbak challenged everyone to come up with a list of things you could do with a phonebook in two minutes. The ENGI 120 students, other apprentice leaders, and I were all furiously thinking and writing down EVERY idea that popped into our head.
We then formed groups to discuss our impressively long lists of possible activities involving phonebooks. Everyone came up with some pretty unique and creative ideas. However, none of the ideas that we formed by ourselves were nearly as impressive as the ideas that resulted from the group brainstorming session.
After this exercise the freshman and the apprentice leaders were clearly ready to apply the same creativity from our brainstorming challenge to the design projects. As Dr. Saterbak had stressed with person anecdotes, no idea is a bad idea during brainstorming. I believe that everyone truly took this to heart in the groups. In the early stages there were some comical ideas like creating a “squirrel power plant” to power the moisture control box for the OEDK green roof. Although that was a more farfetched idea, the brainstorming session resulted in a wealth of great ideas that could solve these design problems.
It was inspiring to see all the creativity flow in a organized and logical way. From the picture you can see that each group was able to come up w a plethora of ideas.