The halfway point! It simultaneously feels like way longer and like no time has passed at all. I’m really excited to have pushed through the more intense stages of the engineering design process – this means we can start building stuff! Prototyping and testing are easily my favorite parts of the process, and I can’t wait to get started next week. My team is in a unique position where we’ll likely end up prototyping multiple potential options, and then present all of them. It’s definitely daunting thinking about finishing all that work, but the freedom is exciting too.

This week, my group had a lot (a LOT) of interviews. It was definitely a long and tiring week, but meeting with everyone was really helpful. Our last interview of the week was with Prince Mtenthaonga, a clinician and research assistant in Malawi who works closely with Rice 360. He had such great insights into our project, and hearing his input allowed us to make justified design decisions while screening brainstormed ideas. We feel a lot more confident having talked to an actual end user for our device, and it was also just great to hear Prince’s advice!

Outside of the project, we finally got to take our big group photo outside the OEDK this week. We also got to have a catered lunch together on Friday. The Thai food was a much needed change of pace, and it was just nice to talk with everybody outside of the workspace. Here is a group photo from lunch!