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.
BME Design 