PROJECT DESCRIPTION For this assignment, we had to think of a problem in the world and engineer a solution. The project was open-ended and the instructions were intentionally left vague. To begin, we started brainstorming areas that we were interested in (ex. natural disasters, broken hairties, structural issues, world hunger) and got into groups based on common interests. My group chose to focus on medical progress, and later narrowed it down to trauma prevention. Before identifying what type of trauma to focus on, we brainstormed a list of different solutions for different types of trauma. For trauma caused by motor-vehicle collisions, we thought of designing a car with airbags triggered by sensors on the exterior. My group found that the force of the car moving might be too much to be stopped by airbags and sensors might activate unnecessarily. We each individually researched a different branch of trauma (brain, spinal, trauma from car accidents, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) to get a better idea of what we were trying to solve and shared our data. We found that most physical trauma was caused by fatal falls and started to look for what was already available and how we could improve it. We got a lot of our information from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention and BC Medical Journal websites. We looked into the product "Life Alert" and thought about changing it so that it had the features we wanted. We did not have materials or expertise to create a functional prototype so we made a list of the material that would be needed to do so and made a small, wooden model that was about the size and width of the product.
Engineering Design Cycle: 1) Identify a need 2) Research the problem 3) Brainstorm/develop possible solutions 4) Select the most promising solution 5) Plan 6) Build prototype 7) Test and evaluate 8) Communicate design 9) Redesign 10) Repeat
REFLECTION Although this project required a lot of research, it was fun to choose our own subject. My group had some trouble agreeing on decisions but managed time well. In this project, my group managed time better than I had done in previous groups. We added our research together and finished our presentation, but we didn't make presentation practice a priority, therefore we struggled a little while showing it to the class. I had originally been confused as how to start the project, since it was so open-ended. In the end, all the steps we took made sense and contributed to our final product.