Projects

Interactive Toy Design

This was the first project of actually designing something.  Each of us came up with three interactive toy ideas, and presented to the whole class.  It was also the first time we made presentations in this class.  We videotaped each presentation and watched over his or her own presentation at home.  Because I could watch the video later and see what I did well and didn't well, I found it really helpful in order to improve my own presentation skill.  I was looking down and not making eye contact to the audience.  Because I could find it in the video, next time when I make a presentation, I could improve on that point.

*****   Designing Toys   *****

Rapid Manufacturing Processes

This was one of the longest project and is still not finished yet.  It was very good experience for me since I had never heard of any rapid prototype designing processes.  By the end of the first step of this project, I knew about all of 9 processes by heart.  It was very beneficial to me and I know I'm not the only one in class who felt that way.  This was also the first project that required us to get together and work on it outside of the class time.  Sam, Shalyn and I had several meetings and they went pretty smoothly.  I just thought that if these girls could shut up and stop picking on me, everything went much faster pace.  j/k  =)  We were all glad that we had a relatively easy part to design assigned, the stand-offs.  Our group was to use the Fuse Deposition Manufacturing process, or FDM in short.  I didn't think I did as well as I could have on the presentation.  This time I had so much to cover and some of the teams used in the process were unknown to me.  It was rather hard to present this material.  We've all seen how last year's prototype didn't quite work well.  We'll see how ours turns out.

*****   Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)   *****

Outreach Activity for Engineering Education / Take Our Daughters to Work / Meeting of the Minds

This project turned out to be the toughest one of all.  First of all, it was difficult to come up with an activity that will teach children something about engineering.  It is easy to just say "something about engineering", but in reality, it is rather hard coming up with one.  My partner and I went online and searched for possible activities, and even went to spend 3 hours up in the kids' book section of Barns'n'novles on one weekend.  We interviewed the little kids who were there to get some idea of what they know and how well they know about science in different age group.

Trying to teach the children the physical concepts were another difficult part of this project.  Each child has different science background and how well they know about related material varied.  For that reason, we could never start talking about the material from the same place.  We learned that just lecturing the children about the material is not attractive therefore not productive nor effective.  Asking questions frequently helps them to stay focused and interested on the subject.

It was also hard to explain the same things to adults who obviously know a lot more than children do.  Our visitors at the symposium were mainly college students and adults, and we had to adjust what we present at our table.  Making the poster was a lot of fun, but also took a lot of time for just a simple design.  While making the poster, I had to keep reminding myself the object of the poster is to attrace visitors and make them come to our table and not to inform them with every single detail of our presentation.  After all it was a lot of fun and was a good final project for this class.