Engineers work with people just as much as we work with tools. The second week made me realize just how important user needs-assessment is in the engineering design process. It’s not enough to just make a functional product; the key is to make something that is tailored towards your users. 

The past week consisted of multiple valuable meetings/interviews that allowed us to dig deeper into user needs. We were lucky to speak with Mr. Alex Benavides, a veteran at U of H, who helped us understand his life experiences and work environment back when he was on active duty. He told us a lot about the current existing solutions as well as what kind of information can be better delivered as haptics. More importantly, he gave us a clear understanding of the situations that ground troops might face in everyday operations. There are challenges like low visibility, obstructed visual field, information overload, heavy armor and many more. All of this information is crucial to us designing a product that will be best suited for our users. 

We were also glad to have met Mr. Brett Pugsley, who worked for the Navy as an aviator. He gave us a clear idea of where to place the tactors so that the vibrations would give the users a 360 viewpoint, provided us with advice on how to incorporate the haptic system into the helmet such that it won’t be a distraction, and gave us some resources to some simulations that can help us better understand their point of view. 

Aside from these user interviews, we also talked to Dr. Philip Kortum who is an expert on usability and user testing. He gave us advice on ways to get a diverse sample pool and structure the testing, and walked us through the process of getting an IRB approval. User testing is incredibly important in our project as we rely on the users to interpret and act according to the information that the haptics provide. Last but not least, we finally spoke to our client, Mr. Grant Belton, who clarified our team assignment and gave us more information about the current prototype as well as his expectations. 

During the time out of meetings, our team worked hard on doing research to understand more about the different kinds of haptics and the technology required for each, and worked on defining our design criteria. We also did more testing with the syntacts kit from the MAHI lab and ordered headbands in an effort to streamline the user testing process. 

Next week, we hope to brainstorm solutions and start preliminary work on a prototype!