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Testing Design Solutions

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

It’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!

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Brainstorming Class

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

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.

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Client Meetings: Rice Teams

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Right from the start, it was made extremely clear to the teams how important a resource their clients would be to them. Their clients were the ones who, of course, provided us with the projects, and were also the best people for the teams to interact with early on. The teams were encouraged to prepare an entire list of questions prior to the actual meeting so that they could interview the clients efficiently and professionally. Additionally this forced them to think about the most crucial aspects of the project and prioritize which factors were the most critical to investigate further into, which was a very constructive process overall. Each team for the Rice project came up with a list of about 20 questions for their respective projects.

The OEDK roof team talks with Bart Sinclair, Assistant Dean of Engineering

The OEDK Roof team was the first one that Camille and I interacted with, and their client was Dr. Bart Sinclair, the Associate Dean of Engineering, and the brains behind the OEDK Green Roof project. The main focus of the team was to try to learn more about the roof itself, which they have not been allowed onto yet, due to safety concerns. They geared their questions to trying to understand what the roof actually looked like, as well as what the current system was on top of the roof. Understanding the deficiencies of the current system was very important to them, along with really trying to understand what were the final achievable goals that were expected of them. Although initially slightly hesitant in their questioning, the team picked up in confidence, especially after Dr. Sinclair’s friendly and detailed answers to all their questions.

After about 4-5 questions into the Roof team’s interview, we moved over to the Surrey team’s meeting. This transition was a touch untidy, and since then we have decided to only switch every class period between teams. The Surrey team was meeting with Mr. Richard Johnson, Director of Sustainability for Rice; Ms. Susann Glenn, Manager of Communications for Facilities, Engineering and Planning (FE&P) and Mr. William Heath, the Equipment Repair Supervisor for FE&P, representing the current golf cart operators.

Member of the Surrey team make their first contact with their Rice clients.

It was apparent in the meeting that Mr. Johnson and Ms. Glenn were extremely enthusiastic about the Surrey project, and couldn’t wait to see the Rice students get started on modifying it for FE&P’s use. Mr. Heath however, was a greater voice of caution and gave very practical advice on what he expected from his carts and why he was worried by the Surrey and its extensive use. The team was once again extremely proficient at asking probing questions that dealt with the technical side of the design and user requirements, but also the very necessary logistical aspects of the project, such as which departments would be using the Surrey, and how current operations are carried out by FE&P. A very impressive point about this group was how they had identified some of the constraints with the Surrey and asked the sponsors of the project what sort of initial ideas they had about these problems. For example the question of whether the Surrey would be required to reverse or not was brought up and the team carefully noted the additional requirement for the Surrey. They also learned a great detail about the current golf carts used, and tried to find out what sort of incentives could be used to convince the staff to move from the carts to the Surreys.

Both teams had a slightly different approach to the way they asked their clients questions. The Roof team all participated in the interview, with each person assigned certain questions to ask Dr. Sinclair, while on the other hand the Surrey group was seen to have a couple of spokespeople for the entire team who dictated the bulk of the interview, with an occasional question from the others as it fit into the flow of the conversation. A very encouraging sign to notice was the efficient and organized manner in which the teams decided to schedule regular meeting with the sponsors to provide them with updates and ask further questions about their projects.

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Client Meetings: Shriners

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Dr. Gogola, back left, explains the difficulties with current technology for measuring forearm rotation.

On Thursday, the design teams met with the clients in order to discuss the projects.  I worked with the Forearm Rotation team as they prepared for their meeting with Dr. Gogola, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Shriner’s Hospital and the client for this project.  During the preceding meeting, the freshmen had generated a list of questions to ask the client to clarify the details of the project; in addition, they created a google document to enable every team member to continue adding/editing the list of questions after class.  As Dr. Gogola is the client for both Shriners projects, the two groups only had half of the total time to ask her questions and thus had to use their time very efficiently.

Before class, one of the team members printed out a copy of the question sheet for each member of the team.  These questions had been divided into “Design” and “Logistics” categories and ranked by importance in case there was not enough time to ask all the questions.  Fortunately, this turned out to be unnecessary as Dr. Gogola sped through the questions, giving informative, complete, and succinct answers to all of them, as well as offering ideas of her own.  By the end of the day, the team had learned much from Dr. Gogola’s experience in the field.  In addition, she had given the team her contact information as well as offered several dates and times when the team could visit Shriners to observe firsthand the existing methods for measuring range of motion.

Wheelchair group members look on as Dr. Gogola explains Pedro's condition.

In the wheelchair group, team members were itching to learn specifically about their client, whose name is Pedro.  They learned that Pedro’s disability, arthrogryposis, makes some of his joints in his arms and legs immobile.  They also learned more specific information about Pedro’s situation and why this design project is necessary.  It was very exciting to meet Dr. Gogola and schedule a time to meet Pedro in person.

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Marshmallow Challenge

Friday, January 14th, 2011

Students struggle to create a standing marshmallow structure using only string, tape, and spaghetti

The marshmallow challenge was overall a successful way to engage students and evaluate group work. The most difficult part of the process was working on the preparations for the challenge over winter break. As we were not able to get together, collaboration was difficult. We used a GoogleDocs to attempt to work jointly on the technical memo as well as assigning jobs. However, it was difficult to work under time constraints, especially considering our differing abilities to access the internet.

One of the most important things we did was test run the challenge. This allowed us to have a personal insight during discussions but also showed us what aspects of the challenge would need to be arrange. We found 3 to be the ideal number for working on the task, as two was too small and four would have led to a lack of tasks. We divided the various tasks before and during the challenge to different members of the Apprentice Leaders. Having each person with an assigned role and place to be made the challenge run smoothly. We also did not pick up on verbal cues that we needed to be transitioning to leading the class- this was later clarified by our faculty advisors, but would have been useful to know about beforehand.

Some things we would change:

  • Work on the memo before break
  • Trial run the start of the challenge: i.e. who says what, and how to facilitate the movement of teams and distribution of supplies
  • Less discussion time (10min)

Some things we would keep:

  • Predefined roles and jobs
  • Discussions facilitated by A.L’s and advisors amongst each group
  • Limited rules
  • Awards to the winning team and most creative

Overall, the challenge seemed to be really fun for the groups. It was a good way to asses the strongest leaders of the group. In addition, it was a good platform to show that as engineers, we will fail; but, it is ok to fail. It was also good to have discussion to get students conversing about engineering and leadership.

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Design Project Pitches

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

In preparation for the ENGI 120 class the faculty advisers along with the Apprentice Leaders scoped and selected design projects. We selected three campus projects and three Shriners hospital projects to pitch to the students. However, only four projects would be selected and implemented. The projects that were pitched are as follows:

Rice Projects

  1. OEDK Green Roof Moisture Detection Project – The goal of this project is to design and build an efficient moisture detection system that ties into controlling the irrigation system for the green roof and will allow the plants on it to thrive using the minimum amount of water.
  2. Surrey Adaptation Project – The goal of this project is to design additional storage capacity for the surrey and make other enhancements or modification as recommended by FE&P.
  3. Dish Drop project – The goal of this project is to assess the dish drops at the eleven residential colleges, design improvements for the two slowest and most congested dish drops, and design an ideal dish drop configuration for future serveries.

 Shriner’s Projects

  1. Walk Upright Prompter – The goal of this project is to develop a device that would alert a child when he/she is no longer standing upright
  2. Forearm Rotation Measurement – To develop a method and required materials to accurately and consistently measure the range of rotation of the forearm (radius and ulna) relative to the upper arm (humerus).
  3. Wheelchair Propulsion System for Users with Arm Disabilities – The goal of this project is to develop an adaptation that allows a patient to use his/her existing range of motion and strength to propel both sides of a non-motorized wheelchair

After we selected these viable design projects before Christmas break, we had to prepare project pitches for the ENGI 120 students. Each Apprentice leader was in charge of pitching one project. To prepare us for this potentially nerve-racking task, the Faculty Advisers brought in Tracy Volz, the communication specialist, to coach us on our presenting skills. During our practice pitches Dr. Volz and the other faculty advisers offered constructive criticism. Dr. Volz caught everything down to cracking knuckles, defensively standing in with your arms crossed, and even slide aesthetics.

When the first day of ENGI 120 came and it was time to pitch the projects, all of the Apprentice Leaders did a great job. All of the work, practice, and constructive criticism resulted in a great first impression of the Apprentice Leaders and the freshmen were very excited about the project options. Despite that the project pitches went past the ending time of the class, the freshman seemed to stick with us and stay engaged. The transition between Dr. Saterbak lecturing and the Apprentice Leaders presenting could have been a little tighter, but overall the first day went very well.

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