Welcome back to this week’s blog! We started off this week doing research and are finishing it by screening our solutions to find the one. We had another client meeting today to clarify our team assignment and are planning on having another one tomorrow to figure out what the sensors on the Kasupe are like.
During research, we looked at everything from existing solutions like adapters to regulations for devices in the medical world. From those researched ideas, we were able to have a full understanding of the design space. Creating the design criteria came next. After much discussion, some mental breakdowns, and wild ideas, we finally limited our design criteria to the 7 most important criteria for our device. The criteria we are most proud of is the ease of use tree that we created. We call it the “Trease of Use” for simplification. Get it??
The next thing to do after creating design criteria was to take a giant break. Just kidding… we went right into brainstorming. Yay! With The Piano Guys playing in the background of our brainstorming sesh, we were able to create some of the most brilliant ideas ever. A lot were farfetched, but if you don’t include dimension-finding goggles into brainstorming, are you even doing it right? The picture below shows how the process went (pretty well, I’d say).
Post-It Note Craze
After brainstorming, we put all the post-it notes into categories on the windows. It was at that point that I felt like I was becoming a real engineer. Ideas literally surrounded us. But then came the time for screening and scoring. We spent about an hour today just sorting the ideas into new categories including software vs. hardware and manual vs. automatic. The last part of today consisted of us screening the software solutions, which we ended up finding no winner for. It was a little disappointing, but I expect we’ll be able to figure everything out by tomorrow!
Last thing: For tomorrow’s SEED lunch, we’ll be having a potluck and everyone’s bringing really exciting foods. Can’t wait!!
P.S. What do you get when two peas fight?
Black Eyed (Snap)Peas!!!