Debbie’s First Post
My name is Debbie Druckerman, a third year biomedical engineering student. I am involved in advocacy groups on grounds (mainly OneLess), and a member of Sigma Kappa sorority. I enjoy cooking and baking, working on problem sets, woodworking, skiing, and long walks on the beach. I am taking this class because I hope to be a clinical BMengineer- I hope to bioengineer a kidney as my long term career goal. Ask me about that if you’re interested! I hope to get a better grasp on the clinical design process and a better understanding of needs assessment through this class, and to get a leg up on capstone!
Jay Hanckel Round 5: A Silence of Three Parts
(Side note: my title is a reference to the prologue and epilogues of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, Book 1 of the Kingkiller Chronicles. If you want a book series that is on par with Lord of the Rings, read the Kingkiller Chronicles and feel the torture of waiting for book three)
It’s over. We’re done; we’re finished; we’re through.
The video presentations went rather well. Considering how much time we had to work on them, on top of the fact that hardly any of us really knew how to do video editing, the projects were entertaining and clearly well researched. I am a little envious of a couple of groups projects since they got so far, such as the RA group. I was also thoroughly impressed with the breadth of projects that we got to see, and how creative people got with the solutions with roughly three weeks to prepare everything. I’m incredibly proud of my group and the amount of thought and research we put into our project.
Looking back on any class, I always wonder if the ends justified the means or vice versa. I would say, for this class, the ends did not justify the means, but the means justified the ends. In other words, this class emphasized the process rather than the result, which was especially noticeable when my results usually did not turn out well whether it was the PHP or the final project. Shadowing and interviewing doctors and patients was an incredible experience, one that I didn’t think I would be able to do for a class. I wouldn’t necessarily say I have more tools to solve problems than I had before (Intro to Rehab Engineering did that already), but it certainly gave me more confidence in going out and taking that initiative to get the job done.
Now, I’m going to slip into a coma for a while.
And in the end
I think the thing that I like the most about this class might have ended up also being the thing that I started out liking least about this class. We do things over and over and over again.
At first this was need statements. Generating need statements. Reading need statements. Looking for need statements. Short need statements. Long need statements. Need statements with patient populations. The same need statement for a different population. The same population but a different need. Reasoning for the need statement in the need statement (needception?). Talking to doctors about need statements. Changing need statements. Better need statements (can they really be better or just different or more focused?) More focused need statements. Realistic need statements (unfortunately it didn’t seem that anyone was going to be able to cure cancer in half a semester). At first this seemed like a lot of repetition without much progress, but looking back on it those need statements sure did get better.
Then we moved on to solutions and prototyping at the end. We thought we had done lots of drawings and the first lo-fi prototype would make all of our wildest dreams come true. Sure enough, we were dead wrong. As with pretty much everything else you don’t get things right on the first try (we didn’t get it right the second time either). We kept prototyping and drawing and revisiting those need statements. We kept repeating. There were changes every time so if we get technical with the vocabulary: we were iterating. Iterating can take you down many paths and it seems as though you could really do it infinitely. I’m starting to think you never get it completely right. There’s always you think could go better or look cleaner. There’s always another way or material or set up that you want to try, but at some point you have to stop and show people what you have.
So we did things over and over and over again. At first I wanted to move on. I wanted to do the next thing. I wanted to learn the next step. Then I realized the act of doing it over and over and over again is the next step. You never get things right the first time, sometimes you don’t get them right the 10,000 time (just ask Thomas Edison), but you do get better. We don’t get that chance in many classes. Most classes we see something once and then we are expected to know it again on the final. I liked getting to try things over and over and over and actually get better. That’s the real goal isn’t it? We want to get better. We want to make things better for other people: for patients, for doctors, for parents. So we keep trying different things over and over and over again.
Final reflections
Although I was kinda nervous when I first heard the assignment, I thought the videos ended up being a great way to showcase each groups’ work on the medical team project. Like many of the reviewers mentioned, the videos allowed for a ton of information to be packed in; much more so that can be included in a PowerPoint presentation. It also took off all of the pressure of presenting on the day of, which made it so I could focus more on the other groups’ videos. I thought every group did an amazing job at showing their entire design process and how they got to their prototype, particularly since almost no one had previous video editing experience. A lot of the groups used the whiteboard approach for some aspect of their video, which I thought worked really well to show each step, as well as the design consideration. I also thought that the time lapse of the prototyping process that Team 5 (Sanaa, Nick, Maddie) did was a really cool, attention-getting way to show the criteria and tools that made up their design. I also thought that Team 2’s (Alex, Casey, Kelly) whiteboard visualization of the change in the inflation was a really clean and straightforward way to show the function of their device. Each group took a different approach with their video, but each one really narrowed in on the important aspects of their project.
Overall, the class ended up being a lot different than what I expected. I thought more of the class was going to be like the last half, where we worked on the Medical Center projects. But even with that, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t really know much about the whole design process, and I definitely learned a ton about the details and iterations that go behind just coming up with an actual need. I think it would have been better to shorten the PHPs and add moved to the clinical observations and final project sooner so that we would have had more time to go through more iterations and come up with a better prototype. It was definitely different than any other class I have taken. It could be frustrating sometimes when there were only vague guidelines for the projects, but I think that was really needed for a lot of this class, it pushed everyone to think independently and also gave us an idea of what design is really like. In the real world, no one is going to hand you all of the guidelines for some product you want to make. You have to do research, ask questions, and find out for yourself what needs to get done. This class really showed all the time and thought that goes behind every design, and I definitely have a newfound appreciation for any sort of medical device I see.
Reflection on videos and the semester over all:
Today marked the completion of BME Design and Innovation in Medicine with each design team sharing a short video that conveyed their device, its purpose, and the journey they took in order to produce it. This experience proved to be valuable in a few ways. On one level, it was so interesting to finally see what all my classmates had been working on all semester. I was really impressed by all my classmates, with their gloves powered by automatic motors, mocked up app interfaces, and more. Simultaneously, I also loved seeing how my classmates approached the video process. Although I was initially very intimidated by the video project, in ended up being a great opportunity to explore an entirely new way of conveying information. It gave me a chance to get familiar with iMovie and was also examine my own presentation skills on camera, which although sometimes unpleasant, was definitely a valuable exercise in self-awareness.
The videos my peers presented were unanimously impressive. Many deftly employed the time lapsed white board technique we learned about in class. After hearing comments from our reviewers, it seems as though this technique maybe the clearest and most aesthetic way to present the complex narrative of the design process. It’s also extremely easy to implement and requires no one’s face to be on camera. I imagine this is knowledge I will definitely utilize in the future.
The applicable knowledge, in my experience, has been the one constant theme running through the diverse concepts explored in this class. We touched on everything from architecture to story telling, to personal health, to breaking into the field of professional design. Our lessons were very wide in scope, but I think there will be at least one thing from every class that will prove to be valuable in the future. Over all I am so glad I took this class and can’t wait to explore design thinking more in the future.
Low fidelity Prototyping:
After a few weeks of brainstorming leading to needs assessment and definition eventually leading to less abstract design and sketching, my teammates and I finally felt as though we were ready to start making stuff! This was very exciting, we were finally living up to the title of “maker,” that everyone seems to be applying to all engineering-esque fields these days.
We got in the lab and started immediately messing around with clay, Popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and rubber bands, pretty much any and all the supplies available to us in MR-4. Rubber band turned out to be a great way to make temporary joint connections that were easily adjustable, Pipe cleaners excelled in making shapes fit specifically to the unique curvature of the hand, and clay perfect way to add extra weight to parts of the device we wanted children to know should rest on the table during writing. We were particularly lucky to be working on a design that we could test to some extent on ourselves. Although our hands, for the most part, are much larger than a child’s (perhaps maybe not Sanaa’s…) and none of us have experienced dyspraxia, we were still able to fit the devices to the shape of our hands and assess the relative comfort of various writing positions.
The low cost of materials was also great because it allowed us to try out a almost all of the ideas we had been exploring. These mock-ups may have not been perfect or exact in any sense, but they were enormously valuable in helping else determine which of our potential designs was the most viable for further testing. It also helped us gain a better understanding of the 3-dimensional structure of each design and whether or not 3-D printing would be the right method for constructing the actual prototype. In the end we ended up deciding to pursue a design that consisted of a single plastic element that curved around the back of child’s knuckles to a weighted foot meant to glide along the paper during writing. The device would be laser cut from plastic in flat form and then heated to bend to its final shape.
Shadowing in the Occupational Therapy Clinic:Shadowing in the Occupational Therapy Clinic:
One of my favorite aspects of Design and Innovation has been the opportunity to shadow medical professionals across a variety of disciplines. Throughout the semester, I spent time in the autism clinic, the NICU and with an occupational therapist specializing in developmental pediatrics. Although they all were interesting, the occupational therapy session was unique in its hands on level of patient engagement. Jennifer Kraus generously allowed Sanaa and I to sit in during one of her weekly sessions with a 6 year-old girl whose genetic disorder resulted in dyspraxic behavior. Although non-verbal, the girl was extremely engaged and for the most part enthusiastically willing to do all the activities Ms. Kraus planned. I know it sounds cheesy, but this experience truly expanded my understanding of how much patience and commitment these professionals bring to their work everyday. From the patient’s mother, we also learned what an enormous difference these sessions can make in a child life in a relatively short span of time. When the patient began her sessions with Ms. Kraus she preferred to travel almost exclusively my crawling and was unable to purse her lips at all. After a little less than a year, the girl we observed was able to push her self on a swing, jump over obstacles on the floor and blow pom-poms through a straw.
With regards to our particular design, it was interesting to see what aspects of the grasping motion were most difficult for the patient seemed. Although this child was not yet writing or drawing, Ms. Kraus did have her do a variety of fine motor exercises with pegs and cones. From my perspective it seemed as though the application of pressure to a specific location was particular arduous, this understandably is a skill necessary for writing. After the session, Ms. Kraus was generous enough to give us even more of her time and answer all our questions about her experience with dyspraxia. She, like others we found on the Internet, expressed discontent with the grips and pencils available on the current market. She as of now usually just opts to tell children to switch to computers early on. Since we were hoping our design would eventually give children access to artistic and athletic hobbies previously inaccessible to them, we felt that it would still be able to serve a purpose computers could not.
Video Recap
For this blog post, I want to focus on the videos that were presented for our final project and the thoughts that I had about these. Overall, I thought that the videos were a very useful tool in presenting our journey throughout this semester with all of the different iterations and steps that were taken. I think that it allowed us to be more creative than a typical PowerPoint presentation. Additionally, coupled with the vague video rubric, it allowed for a large amount of variance in the approaches that were taken by different groups. In terms of my own group’s performance, I thought we did well and were really able to convey our story from the semester. Looking back, I think that a recorded interview from Dr. Lunsford definitely would have strengthened his quote rather than just the typed out quote. I also would have liked to have a more representative video of our prototype being used. I think this would have given the viewer a better representation of the device and its exact functions. For the cad portion of the video, I thought that we did a good job keeping the viewer engaged. I was initially worried about losing the viewer’s attention as the description went on, but by adding in some moving text as the voice over continued, I think the viewer was able to follow along with what we were saying and stay engaged. Some of the other videos also had some components that I liked a lot. One group had several videos playing at once as they described a list of things, I thought this was a good approach to this as the viewer could very easily follow along as it provided a very good visual. Personally, I think that I benefitted greatly from this experience. I have always wanted to learn how to use iMovie, and this project forced me to teach myself this software and the many different tricks that accompany it. Something that I really took away from this was the importance of the small details. Just by adding in some subtle details, I think the quality of our video was greatly improved. The background music that we played was useful in providing some ambient noise so it was not just a voice over the entire time. Also, just adding in small transitions between the videos makes a large difference. These make the video progress smoother and add to the overall quality. In conclusion, I think that this project was very beneficial and was a novel approach to presenting that amount of information that comes out of a semester long project.
Feedback on the semester
Things I think should be continued
I think the video presentations were a big success. It was both entertaining and informative to watch. As Maddie commented in class, I was really able to enjoy everyone else’s presentations because I was not preoccupied with worry for my own. I would definitely recommend continuing this assignment in the future.
Presentations as our midterm was really effective. The feedback from our guest judges was insightful for the work we had done and more importantly for future things we do. Data visualization and presentation is a really practical skill set that I think we will all benefit from.
Things I think could be adjusted
Journey mapping marathon. To be quiet honest I think this assignment was stretched out to be way longer than it needed to be for the PHP. Perhaps we could have taken a different approach in learning it because it is a useful tool.
Things I wish we got to do
Data visualization workshops and/or activities.
Overall
This class really different from any other ones I have taken in the BME department. As a non pre-med BME, I felt pretty limited in our department by the lack of classes that are not heavily oriented towards medical school. Taking this class reminded me how broad and applicable BME is, and I only wish this sort of thinking continues to grow in our department.
The Final Projects
After getting a rude awakening about how hard videos were to make, I feel that at the end of the day our group and all the other groups did a nice job getting their videos. What I found very interesting was how all the different groups created their videos using a bunch of different stylistic approaches. I thought it was very cool how one group used a person to be the face of their project while other groups would use a whiteboard to go over how their device was supposed to function. I felt that the white board approach was very effective because not only did it convey lots of information in a small amount of time but it allowed for visuals and voice overs to be used simultaneously. On the flip side, the videos using simply the person talking about their project was also good but it did not convey the same amount of information to the viewer that the whiteboard approach did. Another aspect of our final project videos that I thought was very interesting was how one group in particular used videos from other websites in their project. This made their project video look much more professional as well as give more detail about the functionalities of the body that they were focusing on. I personally was unaware that we were able to use videos from other websites such as youtube and would have loved to put some of those in our presentation had I known. At the end of the day though, I think that everybody worked incredibly hard on these presentations and they all turned out very well. Nice job everybody.
Parting Thoughts
When I first started in this class I thought “how hard can it be to design something”, only to find out that I was looking at this all wrong. I was completely focused on the final design of a device, rather than trying to figure out the niche that the device needed to fill and the “need” that it had to fix. Going into the class I had the mind set of going straight from noticing an issue, to developing something that would fix the problem. As the class went on, I came to realize that the initial issue is usually not the problem but if you dig a bit deeper and interview some people, then you can figure out the bigger issue driving the smaller problems that you originally noticed. It may have taken me a few personal health projects to figure out what exactly the teachers were looking for, but I eventually got it. If I had any advice about the personal health projects, it is that the class was so focused on the process of design that during the early parts of the class the message that the students were supposed to actually invent some device to help with their partner’s goal, got lost in translation. I had originally thought that creating a method for my partner to follow would be the answer to the problem. While my method of having my partner log her calories for her calorie intake goal did work, it was not exactly what the teachers were looking for. In the end I felt that the class was very helpful and gave me great insight into the world of design. It turns out, while the class may have seemed relaxed and maybe even unorganized at times, it was actually artfully structured and designed that way for a purpose, to allow the students to connect the dots rather than telling them how to. Thank you all for a wonderful semester.
BME Design 