Author: krf4ra
End of Class Review
On Friday, we had our final design reviews. It was interesting to see other ideas and see what methods worked for presenting and what methods did not work. The idea that a slideshow can be used as a supplement was particularly new to me, but I felt as if the one Type 1 Diabetes group (the one with a huge display on poster boards) did a fantastic job of incorporate visuals into their presentation.
As for a final review, I have the following to say. I never really anticipated that I would have to take a design class for biomedical engineering. Entering the class, I was worried that I would be left in the dust because I had no prior biomedical knowledge. By the end of class yesterday, it was pretty apparent that human centered design thinking can be broadly applied. I plan on bringing that process of thinking away from this class and applying it in civil engineering, whether it be in designing products in the civil field or simply showing empathy to a contractor or laborer when I start in the construction management industry. I strongly believe that the more knowledge one can compile, the better off they are; this is my rationalization for taking a design class, entrepreneurship class, and multiple economics classes.
I also have a few suggestions for the instructors of this course. I know people are most likely going to complain about their struggles with CAD and the reverse engineering project, but I felt that it was an extremely useful aspect of this class. I had no prior CAD experience and felt that by simply throwing us into the assignment without much explanation, I learned a lot more than I would have with instructions. Of course, it was very time consuming, but I feel as if the experience was work it. With regards to the Personal Health project, I also have a few suggestions. At the end of J Term, there was definitely a time crunch for the Patient project, which left a lot to be desired for the PHP. I felt as if the most productive I was was when I was working with my partner during class, so I would suggest that the partners spend more time together in class to straighten out their problems. Overall , I really enjoyed this class and wanted to thank David and Dr. Allen for their efforts in making it a successful and interesting J Term.
Signing off for now,
Kyle
Day 6
Mom and Dad: “So what did you do today in class, son?”
Kyle: “We played with Play-Doh!”
Mom and Dad: “…..”
Today in class, we did actually play with Play-Doh. We used the Play-Doh and note cards to help us model a hypothetical chair that we were supposed to design for an Alzheimer patient. This helped us learn more about design considerations and criteria as many people created different designs depending on how they interpreted the prompt.
Later in the day, I decided to enter my data from the personal health project and modeled the data on graphs. I created three graphs that included the daily amount of sleep and work outside of class, the amount of time dinner consumed, and the self-perceived tiredness of my partner in the morning. After observing the graphs, I came to the conclusion that my partner is getting approximately 2 more hours of sleep than before he made the suggested changes on January 6/7th. He has also shortened his dinner time by approximately 30 minutes by reading a book instead of watching TV during his dinner. Lastly, he also reported feeling less tired in the morning and attributed this to the sleep app that I pointed him to. Of course, a lot of this data was collected over the weekend, so we will have to wait and see if these trends hold during the second week of J Term.
-Kyle
Presentations
Today, we presented both our patient and personal projects to three observers from different department at UVa. These observers offered astute observations regarding both projects especially regarding the technology of our patient project. We anticipated a few of these questions, but we did not have enough time to work out certain problems with our dog toy yet, including durability, battery concerns, materials used, and the distance that the locator works at. The most useful suggestion that I received for both projects was to create a map to model the data flow. I had not really thought of doing anything like this before, but after doing this for my personal project, I realize that the data flow map is instrumental for your ability to make observations from the data and make potential iterations in the future. My partner’s need was to get better sleep, so I now have him using a sleep quality app and planning his day out in a log so that I can compare his plans to his actual schedule. I broke out the potential results from these data collection methods and planned out potential future responses to the results. I plan on doing something similar with the patient project so that we can anticipate problems that will occur in prototyping and potential solutions.
-Kyle
Day 4- Turning Point
Today, we broke off into groups within our patient project in order to create needs statements. From now on, we will be primarily working within this smaller group to come up with a solution to our determined need. My smaller group within the visual impairment group came up with the need to determine “A way for a visually impaired patient to locate his/her guide dog’s toys.” This need was determined through observation and through interviews, as our patient’s dog would not bring back its toy back to the patient during the dog’s allotted play time. After class, my group went to the library to search for possible solutions or current available technology that could be of use. We found the app, “Tile,” which is used to help one locate objects that he/she has misplaced. By inserting a chip, similar to the one used by Tile, into a dog toy, our patient could locate the dog toy dropped by his/her dog during play time by tapping a button on her phone and listening for the ring coming from the toy. In the upcoming question, we will address multiple problems that we have come up with that may be an issue. Potential issues we will have to address include (but are not limited to) durability, farthest distance the device can work from, whether the locator chip can work through different objects (tennis ball, stuffed animal, etc.), and concerns regarding the battery life of the locator.
-Kyle
Day 2- January 5th 2016
On the second day of class, we created a journey map for our partner’s personal project. Creating the journey map led me to a bunch of discoveries regarding my partner’s problems with sleep. By mapping out his day, I found that he generally spent time in the evenings at his home, his Research Laboratory in Rice Hall, or Lacy Hall. He attested that he had various productivity levels at each location, which could slightly alter the time that he decided to go to sleep. He stated that he went to sleep between 1 AM and 3 AM every night, which means that he is either putting off work at times or has too large of a workload. Following this, I asked for his priorities between school and his two extracurricular activities to start along the path of identifying a need. I also plan on asking my partner about his future goals to determine where he should focus his efforts in the upcoming semester, if his sleeping problems are indeed associated with too large of a workload.
Visual Impairment Project- Days 1-3
Our group met our patient on Monday, an elderly woman that is legally blind and uses a guide dog to help her with her day-to-day actions. She told us that she went blind in graduate school and suffered from a multitude of conditions, including aniridia (absence of the iris), cataracts, nystagmus, glaucoma, and others. She has had 9 surgeries on her left eye, which have left it in such bad shape that she refuses to get her right eye further corrected or operated on. The next three days were spent researching the diseases that she suffers from as well as coordinating with her to observe her at work, at home, and at daily activities. Through observations and research, we plan to develop a need statement to create a solution that helps our patient with her daily life. After talking early today as a group, we decided that we do not have the expertise to be able to solve many of the complications that emerge from eye surgery and plan on focusing on a need that can aid her in some manner, whether it be walking in the dark, navigating her household, or even labeling clothes. Our patient had some suggestions and identified a few of her needs (a few of them are listed above), but we plan on continuing our observations to see if our observations can lead us to a need that solves a more macro problem that faces visually impaired people across the world.
-Kyle
Day 1-January 4, 2016
For the personal health project, my patient stated that he wanted to be able to sleep more this upcoming semester. In order to start observing his sleep patterns and habits, I asked the patient to record the amount of hours he sleeps each night, rate from 1 to 10 how he feels the morning after that sleep, and record the hours of school work and the hours of extracurricular activities that the patient does in a day. By collecting this data, I should be able to determine if the patient feels better after sleeping more hours. Also, I should be able to figure out if there are any problems with time management, as the patient may not sleep very much because he is not using his time effectively during the day. There is no direct way to observe his time management without invading his privacy, so I asked him to self-report the hours of school work and extracurricular activities that he does in a day. I most likely will run into two problems with these observations. It would be best if I could calculate the average amount of school work done daily in our class, but that is not feasible, so I will compare his totals to mine, since we are in the same class and are both currently not involved in any extracurricular activities. Also, I will be collecting data when my patient is only taking 3 credits and not involved in extracurricular activities, which may give me different results for time management than I would expect when he is taking a full course load during the Fall or Spring Semester. I may have to adjust this plan after 3 to 4 days in order to collect more useful information, so stay tuned for updates regarding my personal health project.
-Kyle
BME Design 