This week was full of meetings for clarifying our design criteria and decomposing our problem. We first met with two members of the EPIWATER team early in the week and went through their design process to gain a better understanding of the rationale behind their design and testing. It was interesting to hear firsthand their thoughts on the improvements that need to be made to their design, such as organization, housing of electrical components, and the load cell mechanism. We plan on meeting with two other members next week in order to discuss the sustainability criteria and Arduino code in more detail. Later this week, we met with Dr. Fowotade, a clinical virologist in Nigeria, and discussed the COVID-19 testing that her lab does and other questions we had with the process of testing wastewater samples. Originally, our client had referred to her as a possible end user for our device, but after meeting with Dr. Fowotade, she had told us that another polio lab in Nigeria that performs wastewater sampling would be a more likely end user. Therefore, we hope to be able to contact the polio lab sometime next week to deepen our understanding of the wastewater based epidemiology currently being employed in Nigerian communities. Finally, later in the week, we met with Mr. Zach LaTurner to talk about the wastewater collection and epidemiology in Houston and specifically the testing process for diseases in the lab. He also suggested that we contact the Houston Health Department for more information on wastewater sampling and testing in the local community.

All of the information that we gained from the various interviews this week helped us clarify our design criteria. We referred to the previous team’s design criteria and also added our own, such as functions of the user interface, replicability, and maintenance of the device. After ranking our design criteria using a pairwise comparison chart, we performed problem decomposition and identified specific design blocks that we will need to focus on for our project, including the housing/protection of electronics, mechanism to weight the sample, user interface, assembly and usage instructions, mechanism for carrying the device, and measuring interior temperature of the device and battery voltage. 

In addition, we began ordering parts to reconstruct our device this week as we unexpectedly lost access to the previous physical prototype. Although it is unfortunate that we no longer can test out the previous prototype, it is an opportunity for us to gain greater insight in actually reconstructing the critical components of the device and identify both its strengths and limitations as we build it. We can also assess the device’s ease of replicability in rebuilding it. In order to be efficient, our team plans on focusing on rebuilding mainly the circuitry of the device and seeing how it functions, instead of investing too much time and energy in remaking the whole device with the outer cooler and housing parts. 

Outside of team project times, I enjoyed the various design workshops, prototyping workshops, and Pro Dev workshops we had this week. The design workshops helped refresh my memory of the engineering design process, and the Pro Dev workshops made me more aware of engaging in active listening and working on being more confrontational with difficult conversations. I really enjoyed the prototyping workshops in learning about breadboarding and circuits, which I have never done before, and learning more about CAD.

Next week, our team plans on meeting with two other EPIWATER members, the UI Design Studio Team in Nigeria, and Mr. Gerba to gather more information and confirm existing knowledge. I’m also looking forward to starting reconstruction of the device, brainstorming other solution ideas, and starting low fidelity prototyping!