Continuing from Week 2 when we had our first interview and did the first round of background research as part of our Clarifying  Team Assignment and Understanding Problem Context steps we move on to Week three. This week was more dedicated for the third step of the Engineering Design Process: Defining Design Criteria. Design criteria are the requirements of the project as specified by the client and the user through interviews.

Moreover the interviews did not stop in week two, but we have continued to hold more interviews with various stakeholders from NEST360 in order to get more insight into the user requirements. We reviewed the interview minutes and notes and compiled a list of the user requirements, then we classified these accordingly as either constraints or objectives. Constraints (or user needs) are the requirements like safety that must be met by the solution for it to be able to reach implementation, whereas the objectives are the desirable features that could be included as part of the solution. The list is as follows. 

• Objectives 
  • Durability – described as the number of times the device requires critical maintenance i.e. fixing
  • Ease of Use – defined as the ability of the device to show information like the progress of charging of the devices, also included in the definition is the number of steps it takes to set up each device for charging and sanitizing.
  • Power Efficiency – the charging station must draw the right amount of current and power from the hospital’s mains that will not short circuit the whole hospital or nearby hospital appliances
  • Low-cost – since this is a device for low-resource settings it is required that the charging station is portable
  • Modularity – defined as how easy it is to integrate another piece that extends the storage space.
• Constraints 
  • Charging Multiple Devices Simultaneously
  • Safety –  includes the protection of the station from power surges that might damage the devices. The station should have all the electrical wiring properly insulated and covered out of sight of the users to avoid electrocution

In addition to defining the design criteria we started doing some brainstorming. However Week 4 will be the official week for more brainstorming.