Week 2 is finally coming to a close and it has been quire a change in pace. Last week I ended with brainstorming and and solutions. Brainstorming led to the inevitable result of about 30 solutions that needed to be selected among. Naturally the most efficient method was Pugh scoring and screening (every ENGI120/FWIS188 students favorite process). The scoring was easy because all of our solutions easily fit into the three categories of hanging items, water items, and land items. After a long morning of debates we brought some fun ideas to the scoring. Team Hippo decided to do it properly so we listed out our design criteria and made scales to rank all of our solutions in each criteria. You can see the result in the picture to the left. We had some beautiful justifications for every situation there was only one small problem, all of our solutions scored within the margin of error. It was a good thing we were ahead of schedule at that point because by the time we had figured out that problem we had both TA’s and Dr. Hunter gathered around laughing at the results and trying to figure out how to get a meaningful answer. Ultimately, our foolproof system had failed us and we ended up selecting the most interesting/unique idea with Dr. Hunter’s permission because in the words of Caz “How did this happen you did everything right?!”. I am proud to say the “Jack” was Team Hippo’s offering to the Tapirs of the Houston Zoo

The weekend was sadly on the rainy side. I stuck around my house through Saturday and did the mundane things like grocery shopping. Turns out living off campus is not all glamour. Sunday brought a little more fun because my housemates and I hosted the Brazilian students, Rebeca, Eduardo, and Julia over to watch Brazil’s opening match in the world cup. We ended up spending most of the afternoon talking and generally having a good time. As with all good weekends though, Monday is always right around the corner. At least Monday had some excitement in store.

On Monday we began prototyping our zoo solutions! We knocked out our low-fidelity prototypes in about 30 minutes and found that we were all basically on the same page. What followed must be the most efficient prototyping session I have ever partaken in. We rather quickly stocked ourselves with 1-inch PVC pipes, fittings, and connectors and raided the power drills and jigsaws. I even got to learn how to use a new tool! Sammi noticed me trying to use a saw to cut our pipes and introduced me to the pipe cutters. With the new knowledge we managed to gather all of our pieces in short order and got to have some fun using the drills to bore a series of holes into the pipes. After boring we connected everything and got to spray paint it. The result was farm better than I expected honestly. We took our only full Team Hippo photo at that point (on the right) and called it a day while our new contraption spent the night drying.

Tuesday was insanely fast. We had one day to develop and administer a testing plan and then create and give a design presentation. We took it in good stride and tested what we could. I made what may be the most biased “Blends Into Environment” test ever created. See what you think of it in the photo on the Left. Amazingly our device actually passed the criteria we were able to test. The morning concluded with the project pitches for our summer projects. I put the brachial plexus palsy project as my top choice. The project involves building a medical model for a physical therapist that shows the parents of affected infants how to properly perform the therapy on their child. I mostly went for it because it seemed the most mechanical of the projects but I also was curious to learn more about shoulder therapy since I am currently going through it myself as I recover from an operation a couple months ago. I am definitely gonna try to drag my therapist into explaining the anatomy on me next visit. After lunch we threw together a presentation and presented. My team had me run the intro since I was the least oppposed to public speaking and the hook I came up with may  have been the most depressing hook ever. I began the presentation like this. “Could you all take a moment and imagine if you lived your entire life in this room. Pretty harrowing? What would you do for entertainment? Enrichment? This is the struggle zoo animals all over the world face every single day.” I somehow managed to say it with a straight face but I think the tone was far more humorous than effective.

Wednesday was the big reveal. I discovered I would be working on the shoulder project. We got to look at the model developed by the previous team but decided to basically start over so that we don’t encounter the same problems they did. The rest of the day was consumed by preparation for our client interview and researching everything we possibly could about shoulder anatomy and physical therapy. Apparently when your shoulder moves up and away from your body it is ABduction and when it is coming down towards your body it is ADduction. The day may not have been that exciting but it was very important. Thursday was mostly just more research. We met up with our client and clarified a lot of the details surrounding what he was looking for. The scope has slightly changed from the previous teams attempt so it turned out to be good that we hadn’t reused their work. For now I have a couple more days of research ahead and am looking forward to seeing where this project will go!