Yesterday in class we had a guest speaker, Eugene Shteyn, who taught us a new brainstorming technique. First, he went over some general brainstorming rules:
Come up with as many ideas as possible. No criticizing or evaluating allowed during the brainstorming. Quantity is better than quality - don't worry about coming up with a good idea, just get all your ideas out there, even if they sound stupid. Wild ideas are great, since it's easier to tame something down than it is to make something more complex. Build and improve on each other's ideas. No action items should be generated just from the brainstorming session. Don't think about any value judgements, think only of solving the problem first.
He also presented some interesting findings about brainstorming and working in groups, such as:
- People perform better individually, but working individually is more frustrating than working in a group
- the best way to work is in pairs - less social intimidation, but people can still bounce ideas off another person who may have a different way of thinking
- electronic brainstorming, like posting ideas online, takes away most of the social intimidation people feel from talking face to face, so it often generates more ideas than in-person brainstorm sessions
- groups of people work better together on simple tasks, but worse on complex tasks
Then, he told us about reverse brainstorming. Instead of coming up with solutions, the idea of reverse brainstorming was to come up with problems. This takes some pressure off, since it's often difficult to think of solutions, and people might be scared that their solution won't work, or it's stupid, or too complicated, etc. But everyone can think of stuff that's wrong with something. This method also helps decrease frustration in the group, as people can state everything that's not working or that they don't like with the project. Also, instead of vague statements like "it sucks" or "it doesn't work", people have to state the problem clearly. This technique allows all group members to see what issues their fellow members are having problems with.
Each team was challenged to come up with 100 problems. They could be problems with the world in general, or more specific problems with our project, or anything in between. At first our team just generated a lot of questions - things that had an answer, but we didn't know it. Prof. Shtein showed us that the problem was that we didn't know the answer. He told us to think more in terms of problem statements, since then our brain isn't fooled into thinking things are truly problems by the question mark at the end. From then on our team generated several problem statements, mostly focusing on problems with our most favored prototype, the Hexa-Prism solar tile things. In total we came up with 91 "problems", but this included some of the more vague "questions" at the beginning to which we had just added "we don't know", as well as some duplicates.
In the second part of the workshop, each team was given a whiteboard with a grid of 100 numbers on it, corresponding to the 100 problems we had generated. Each team member was given 20 sticky notes and told to use the stickies to indicate on the whiteboard their preference to research 10 of the problems short-term (1 semester) and 10 long-term (5 years). This allowed the group to see what problems most people in the group wanted to focus on. In all of the groups, I think, one of the high priorities had something to do with recycling of parts.
I found the workshop to be quite intriguing. I was kind of surprised that there actually were problems that most if not all group members wanted to focus on. One of our major concerns was the load of weight that our design could withstand without any damage. We were originally thinking of that weight as a buildup of snow during the winter, but it could also be leaves, or branches, or even a cat landing on it. Mr. Shteyn admitted that he would not think of snow since he's from California. Remembering this right now, it reminded me of a similar design thought difference present in southeastern New Mexico. Over the summer I interned in Carlsbad, NM, which is on the edge of the Chihauhuan Desert. In that region of the country, they don't get very much rain. In Michigan, there's tons of rain. It's not constantly raining, but there's enough of it that when designing roads and buildings architects and engineers have to think about where all that water is going to go and how it's going to get away in a way that doesn't cause much damage or inconvenience. So we have gutters on buildings and drains on the roads, and we slope things so the rain goes into these containment devices. In Carlsbad, because they're so used to it not raining, they don't have gutters, or drainage systems. The locals joke that Canal St. (the main road going through the city) is called such because it turns into a canal when it rains - and the latter part is pretty close to the truth. And all that is fine, when it's dry. But this summer it rained far more than usual, causing the (presumedly not specially sloped) roof of Wal-Mart to leak all over the store and the roads to flood several times. Canal St. is actually in horrible shape, probably because of a combination of water erosion and traffic, and the people have been trying to get it fixed for years.
Let me try to get back on topic, because I did have a reason for bringing Carlsbad into this. People can be geniuses, but if they don't take the local environment into account when building something, they usually fail. That doesn't make them stupid, it just means they maybe didn't do their research. We have to think about where we're going to install our project, and how we might have to change our design based on location and environment. To take two extremes: If we install it in Houghton, MI (near the top of the UP), effects of snow accumulation should be one of our major focus points, and we don't really need to worry about overheating other than making sure the device doesn't overheat itself. (Houghton rarely gets above 80 degrees F even in summer, but can get around 15 ft of snow in one winter - and the snow sticks around until May.) If we install it in Las Vegas, on the other hand, effects of overheating in direct sunlight should be one of our major focus points, and snow is barely a problem at all (I have a friend from Las Vegas who fried an egg on a sidewalk this summer when the temperature was supposedly around 120 degrees F). All of this is assuming that we stick with a project that will be exposed to the elements, of course. It is possible that we can come up with a design that is resistant to overheating, is strong enough to withstand heavy loads, does not sustain damage with several types of precipitation, and can tolerate wide variations in temperature, which would work in most climates, but we would still have to tweak the design to deal with extremes.
I suppose right now I should really only be worrying about the assignment due in two weeks. We need to create a surface with the same criteria as last week, but for this week, we can use up to 3 sheets of acrylic, and we have to make the surface move on its own with the Arduino. I think we'll probably go with our Hexa-Prism tiles unless those prove too difficult to move, or if we come up with an even better idea. I am pretty worried about all of the parts we want to move smoothly and efficiently, all those triangles that we want to fold up perfectly. We should probably laser-cut the triangles to make them line up better. We'll also have to figure out the framework we want the tiles to be on, and how to make them orient themselves. The framework is the first thing I think we should focus on, because I know there's still some differing opinions in the group. Simon thought we could put them on arms, but Patrick was thinking of having them on tracks. We'll probably discuss it at tomorrow's meeting. We'll also have to figure out whether we want to focus on water collection or sun collection, but I think at the moment we've pretty much ruled out water due to the electronics difficulties.
Oh, and about our prototypes that we presented - The critique actually wasn't that harsh, although I felt silly for putting a picture with a rubber duck in the presentation. The duck was a prize from Explorth, a program designed to let students explore North Campus. Someone - I think Dan - left it up in the Architecture gallery where we were working, so I took some pictures with it. I had meant it to just be a fun title slide, but Mr. Shteyn took it as a serious idea of putting ducks into our project, which we hadn't really thought of. Also, the other groups only presented one prototype which was a culmination of all their improvements, whereas we presented three separate prototypes. Prof. Shtein asked us which one we would pursue, and we said we would probably pursue the latest one, since that kind of came out of the the other two and was our latest improvement on the design. Our design was actually fairly similar to Team 1's design, which used a hexa...penta...some polygon with a large number of repeating units that folded to approximate a sphere. Also, someone asked about wind collection and orienting, and we went through some of our first ideas (rudder-like thing that spins it, fold-out wind turbines) and explained the disadvantages (not enough surface area, not enough height and blade length if we're trying to make it portable). I liked the other teams' ideas, although I'm not sure what Team 3 could apply their storage balls to, and I'm not sure how well Team 4's shelter tiles are going to work in a tile format when each tile currently has to curl up to close (thus exposing what they should be sheltering).
Speaking of tiles, Prof. Daubmann told us that we should look at a way to make our projects into repeating iterations of different panels. So maybe some of our tiles will collect sun, but others will have a different function. Perhaps some will actually be batteries (contain storage cells in the triangles). Maybe others will open up to have sensors that can relay weather information - wind, temperature, pressure, precipitation, etc. We'll see what comes out of the the meeting tomorrow, and what develops in the next week. I hate to sound pessimistic, but I have a feeling we may run into several obstacles along the way that may force us to look in new directions. Then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
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