Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Communication Mechanics Episode 5: Communicating Senior Design Projects - Lessons from Capstone Winners with Mechkiwis, Part 1
34 Plays7 months ago
In Part 1 of the final episode of Season 1 of the podcast, Dr. Jill Fennell speaks to three members of the team that won in the category of Best Mechanical Engineering Project at the Spring 2024 Capstone Engineering Expo, the Mechkiwis. Seniors Isabelle Gustafson, Miguel Daly, and Sana Hafeez share the experience they and their fellow teammates - Claudia Vitale, Lena Moller, and Maxwell Gart - had creating communication materials for their project and designing a successful expo presentation.
Part 2 will be posted next week on Monday, November 11th.
Shownotes and Timestamps
- 01:08 Episode Introduction and Guest Introduction
- 03:30 Capstone project introduction
- 05:10 Working on a Medical Project in an Engineering Context
- 07:25 Adjusting to different communication demands for the project
- 10:35 Team distribution of audience analysis and communication choices
- 13:27 Communication challenges in different parts of the project
- 18:25 Introduction to The Expo Judging Rubric
- 19:22 Team’s consultation of Judging Rubric and Expo preparations
- 26:57 First category: the Problem the team is solving
- 32:54 Second category: Solution to the problem
- 41:37 Usage of cadaver photos during the Expo and how to show them appropriately
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction by Jill Finnell
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Communication Mechanics. I'm Jill Finnell, the Frank K. Webb Chair in Communication Skills at Georgia Tech's Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. In each episode, we'll explore how communication shapes the success of engineers, researchers, and industry professionals. Join us as we share stories of triumphs, challenges, and the strategies that fuel success.
00:00:33
Speaker
Whether you're a seasoned pro, an aspiring student, or simply passionate about engineering, listen as we demystify compelling communication in the world of mechanical engineering.
Communication Challenges in Capstone Design
00:00:52
Speaker
This will be the first part of our two-part final episode of the season.
00:01:08
Speaker
After four years of study in the Woodrow School of Mechanical Engineering, senior engineering students take the project-based capstone design course and compete in the capstone engineering expo. This expo poses perhaps the toughest communication challenge because it requires student teams to communicate the insightfulness of their engineering to a wide and shifting audience through multiple mediums, such as a video, a poster, and a pitch.
Meet the Winners of the Best Mechanical Engineering Project
00:01:35
Speaker
Today, we'll hear from the winners of the Best Mechanical Engineering Project category at the 2024 Spring Engineering Capstone, the McEwis, as they share insights into their journey of preparing and presenting their innovative project. Welcome team. Will you please each introduce yourselves so our listeners can pair your voices with your names? Hi, I'm Miguel Daly.
00:02:00
Speaker
I'm Isabel Gustafson. I'm Sana Hafiz. All right, thank you so much. And you guys had other teammates who couldn't be here today, right? Could you let us know about them as well? Yeah, so we had other teammates. That's Maxwell Gart, Claudia Vitale, and Laina Muller. So McKeelies, could you tell me a little bit about your team name and as well as your project?
Origin of the McEwis Team Name
00:02:20
Speaker
So the invention studio, which is kind of the main student organization that we all met each other through, it's the largest maker space, the largest student run maker space in the country. And their mascot is the kiwi bird, like the one from New Zealand. And the reason for that is because whenever we purchase new 3D printers, the test print that we use to make sure the printer is working is a kiwi bird. And so for the last couple of years, a lot of capstone teams like us, who are primarily volunteers in the invention studio will name our teams after the Kiwi bird and also we're all mechanical engineers on this team so we decided to attack on the mech for mechanical in front of Kiwi.
00:03:00
Speaker
If you ever stop by the space, you'll see about a hundred different kiwi birds on the sea lanes, on the floors, in the little costumes. It's a fun little Easter egg.
Project Focus: Retractors for Shoulder Replacement Surgeries
00:03:09
Speaker
And our project this year for Capstone was sponsored by Restore 3D to make a new set of retractors for total shoulder arthroplasty. So this is shoulder replacement surgeries and the retractors are the tools used throughout the surgery to pull back tissue and bone to expose the top of the humeral head and your glenwood, which is like your ball and socket joint up shoulder.
00:03:30
Speaker
Great, what did your project end up doing? We, in the end, had four different versions of these sets of retractors that Restore3D wanted us to make in order to accompany a shoulder joint replacement surgery. Meaning that it wasn't just one retractor rule we were making, it was actually five that were intended to be used as substitutes for retractors that are currently used in shoulder joint replacement surgery.
00:03:58
Speaker
We found out that the ones that are used by doctors nowadays are very difficult to hold. They actually don't give the surgeon a very clear view of what they're working on. And so we took those problems and used them to make our final set of retractors, which essentially do the same things as the old ones but better.
00:04:18
Speaker
yeah Our new retractors of three main things, the previous retractors are all in their manufacturing process, the vast majority of them are multiple pieces and need high level finishing things like like welding to put them together versus we decided to make ours completely sheet metal bed so it'll make it more cost effective for restore 3D to manufacture in the end.
00:04:37
Speaker
as well as like Miguel said just the ergonomics testing and then the the exposure that we got and we validated all that through three cadaver labs where we achieved full exposure of the humeral head and the glenoid in all three and then did full implantation in two of them. The surgeons we worked with like did express their preference for using our tools. One of them was actually a surgical fellow he's still in training and he hadn't done his shoulder surgery at all in a very very long time and he was still able to get like a perfect implant on the first try. Wow.
Engineering Skills in Medical Projects
00:05:09
Speaker
For our listeners who might not be engineers, how is this an engineering project? you know It sounds like something that like maybe doctors should be doing.
00:05:19
Speaker
The reason that we ended up picking this project, we were actually all a little bit apprehensive at first. our Our teammate Claudia does have a little bit of a medical background through her internships, but we're also all mechanical engineers still. And so after talking with Alex, who was our project sponsor through Restore3D, she helped us out. We loved her and we were like, hey,
00:05:40
Speaker
They wanted actually a mechanical engineering team. That was when you submit for capstone and teams, you can choose a major as your preference. And both from our own ideas and talking to them afterwards, really it's because this is a prototyping and manufacturing project. We realized really quickly into our ideation process that getting physical tools into the hands of the surgeons is how you get the best feedback. And so with our skills and capabilities of being able to rapid prototype,
00:06:05
Speaker
and make like Miguel said the four different iterations and we could have done more if need be from there was really really valuable in this versus having maybe a team who is not in strong in that area that could really only whip out one or two. um So I think that really was a key to our success in the end. Really as engineers we've learned how to look at a problem that we're unfamiliar with and figure out what's needed to make it work. So even though we don't have any like medical background we also don't really have experience in transportation, in robotics. We learn from it and we'll get the information we need to adapt and we will use the people who have more knowledge in that area so we're together to come up with the solution. And that is partially why the retractors aren't optimized for shoulder s surgery in the first place is we wanted to look at a project from an engineer's perspective and figure out what are the gaps and what were surgeons just having to compensate for with skill.
00:07:06
Speaker
because the tools they were using were probably just makeshift at one time before they became standardized. Yeah, that's really interesting to encourage people to think about engineering as an analytical skill set that could be applied to any problem. All of us are going into very different industries after we graduate.
00:07:26
Speaker
This class has a lot of communication tasks. You have do presentations, you write reports, and then the Expo is just a slew of different communication tasks in itself. ah How did your team go about adjusting to the different communication demands?
Crafting Communication for Diverse Audiences
00:07:43
Speaker
Max and I worked together on making our first video in this project, and that was the, I think what the rubric called, an expo teaser video. I don't know if there was another name for it, but essentially it's just a 60 second hook to try to grab people's attention to come to expo to talk about your project.
00:08:05
Speaker
And it was actually kind of funny because when we finished working on it, it reminded me a lot of how medicine commercials are played on TV. We had like a narrative about a shoulder surgery patient named Sarah who was going through this journey of realizing that she needed the shoulder surgery. And then we then transitioned into how there are problems with the current tools and how we aim to fix those problems. Now we didn't talk about how in that 60 second video.
00:08:34
Speaker
but later we had to make a four minute video or five minute video explaining our solution and we again built off of Sarah with a lot of very nice background music and visuals of Sarah having an active lifestyle and really connecting this project about shoulder retractors which doctors use and talking about how it's important for patients despite in our project patients not necessarily being listed as one of the main stakeholders and a big reason for that is because the people who come to Expo are probably not going to be doctors it's most likely going to be patients, parents, curious students who just happen to walk past the table and so that was done in an effort to appeal to a much wider audience
00:09:20
Speaker
A lot of it was remembering about who our audience was. The information we needed to talk to our advisor, Dr. Jarawal, about was a lot different than the information we needed to speak with our sponsor, Alex, about. And that's also very different than the information we needed to tell the visitors who came to our table, who only had those five minutes of relationships with about the project.
00:09:43
Speaker
It was also one thing specifically for the Expo that I think was really interesting in our communication choice there was between the difference of, you know, to really see the the effect of our tools, you in my opinion, the best way to see it was scanning the QR code we have and looking at those shoulder surgery pictures. However, we had it optional because we realized not everybody, um and even us at first, Miguel didn't go to any of our cadaver labs, because it is you know a heavy thing for some people to look at. And so Laina, one of our teammates, really ahead of the idea of having physical things there to show people how the retractors worked. So that way we could accommodate both people, like some have mentioned, understanding our audience of who could handle and see those photos, but also those who still wanted to learn and understand why these retractors were great, but not necessarily need to take that additional step if they weren't comfortable with it. You talked a bit about how
00:10:38
Speaker
You had to really think about who your audience was going to be and then curate your communication for that audience. Did different teammates specialize in different audiences or did you just sort of collectively analyze what this audience wants and figure out what your communication choices should be? We all made sure that all of us could present to any Person who came to our table. It was important that we had all prepared very well for the expo I think we did about like 10 hours of pitch practice together so much so much
00:11:11
Speaker
Um, and I think one of the things is, you know, we, we stood upstairs in here and just walked around and got our two minute pitch down. And we realized pretty soon in the expo that people did not want just straight up pitches, which is fine. But I think it really helped us have a cohesive message of what to tell people. And then also through all the rest of these deliverables, while I think lots of us may be specialized in one deliverable type or another, like Miguel said, he and Max really took the lead on that video. Um, cause that's, you know, not your, your skills lie in a lot of places, but specifically the video editing him and Max had a really good grasp on. Um, but making sure that we got all of these deliverables in front of all of our eyes to give all of our perspectives to it. So that way
00:11:51
Speaker
you not only have the people that are heading that effort thinking about the avatars or thinking about who your audience is but also then each a team member from their personal perspectives and from what they might think bring in so i think the script was edited a little bit each of our presentations during the class was edited a bit we of course all contributed to the report so One thing that helped us, I think, during class presentations, there's a portion that's based on peer evaluation and feedback. Everyone just types into their phone, submits like anonymous comments. And one thing that we got was people really liked how approachable and down-to-earth our presentations are, because a lot of other teams had a lot of high-level electronics. They had like schematics. Ours is an easier to digest like project. like You can visualize it. You can see its application.
00:12:41
Speaker
And just having points of relatability worked into our presentations almost if we were having a conversation with each other, with the people who came to stop by, helped us give space to when people wanted to ask questions, when they wanted to know more which aspects interested in them the most. I think that's great. You know, people sometimes in these team classes forget that collaboration means working together and not just chopping up their project and working in silos. and You can really see the teams that work together well when it comes to Expo as an audience member because you can be standing getting a presentation from one student and the person next to you is getting a very different kind of presentation. And it's clear when that's not happening as well.
Defining and Communicating Engineering Metrics
00:13:27
Speaker
As you guys were working on your project, were there parts that you knew were going to be difficult to communicate to one or more audiences? And how did you prepare for that?
00:13:38
Speaker
So I think the part we had most difficulty with was the validation of our first design using engineering data. This is talking about how much force can our tools withstand or how much force can our tools withstand related to pressing them in surgery. How much are we expecting the tools to experience when a doctor is pushing on it with all of their weight or maybe they're pulling on it and clipping it to something? Is it going to break? Is ultimately the question we're trying to answer.
00:14:13
Speaker
And at first, we didn't feel the need to do that because we were using very, very strong metals in an industry that doesn't have a lot of regulation surrounding the material strength of their tools.
00:14:28
Speaker
because the metal that they use, stainless steel and titanium in other cases, is so strong that it's very difficult for a regular human being to just grab it with their hands and bend it. And when we did background research, we didn't really find a whole lot of guidance on how strong our design needed to be. And so we moved forward with our professor in presenting our first presentation on how we came up with our first idea.
00:14:56
Speaker
And he told us, guys, you need to have some sort of numerical justification for this design. And we said, but our company said that this is fine. And in the medical industry, there is no precedent for this. We were being asked to do something that really hadn't been done before in our eyes. And so ultimately, we talked with our professor and realized that if we wanted to pitch this idea to someone who needs that justification. That person doesn't really care whether or not it's been done before, but if they don't have it, then they're not going to buy into our idea.
00:15:31
Speaker
It's really interesting because I think what that shows is, and as you guys have said, a lot of these engineering projects are straddling fields. It's engineering plus something else. So if you have this mixed audience, you're going to have audiences that care about different metrics. And so sometimes you have to solve both of those is what I'm hearing. It was kind of like,
00:15:54
Speaker
Having an introduction of like what does it mean for our product to work, earlier we talked about how the best way to for us to get feedback was to have physical prototypes in the hands of the surgeon because his experience would tell us, hey, will this tool fit the way it needs to be just from his experience? And one metric of success is, okay, if the retractor goes into natural shoulder and moves the bones out of the way without causing excessive tissue damage and without getting in the way of any other tool, then it's a success. But that's a very flimsy engineering metric of success.
00:16:33
Speaker
because often times you don't have that miniist level of validation. Yeah, I think what kind of this all boils down to is our biggest hurdle as a team and then in our technical communication was those quantitative specifications and I think one of the big reasons for that like they've kind of mentioned is because we were so focused at first on getting our form factor down because you know if you try and do an FBA or general stress calculations on a very different shape from something else it is very different and so
00:17:05
Speaker
um I think it was kind of a best of both worlds where we did realize eventually we definitely didn't need them and I think thankfully in the end we got to that point with you know Orange Strong testing other stuff we did related to that but um it it also shows the value I think in understanding initial ideation may not always necessarily come with that full quantitative specifications. So, you know, using that surge of feedback qualitatively to change our form factor. And then once we got a final form factor to go, okay, Dr. Jerry, well, like now we will now we will do your engineering analysis. um And I think that's a valid way to look at things, especially for such a short term project like this, but definitely realizing in the end that as engineers, it sounds silly, but you need those quantitative specifications, or else you really haven't done much engineering, right? You've just kind of
00:17:54
Speaker
thought about a process and that's kind of the difference between just pure design and then the engineering side is The design is in the the form factor, how someone uses it, things like that. The engineering would be in the you know it's in the judgment. Can I break it? yeah yeah And they're both valuable in their own right. Yeah, yeah because they're they're different audiences that care about the use value and in different ways. And so if you're going to communicate this to different audiences, you might need to change the evidence that you've used
Structuring Pitches for the Expo
00:18:22
Speaker
based on that audience. yes yeah You guys did really well at the expo. Congratulations on winning the best in the category. Well deserved. I wanted to spend some time in this podcast to talk about the judging rubric because you guys obviously did well with the judges. I should know I was one of your judges.
00:18:41
Speaker
And I did one of the things I almost never do, which was to award all 20 points. So 20 points is the the maximum you can get because there are four categories, problem, solution, innovation, and presentation energy, and it's ranked on a zero to five scale between those four.
00:18:59
Speaker
And I really don't ever get full points unless I can't think of anything that you could have done better. So great job, guys. Thank you. I'd like to spend some time in our discussion working through these categories in the rubric.
00:19:14
Speaker
to hear your team talk about how you went about designing your communications ability to hit all of these categories well. Did your team consult the judging rubric as you prepared for the expo? Yes. So when we initially got together to practice these pitches and come up with, you know, we had our, well, even in designing the poster, really, we took this all into consideration.
00:19:35
Speaker
ah Mainly because we realized if we hit these four points that we, or presentation energy of course isn't really a point to talk about, it's just a way you do it, but the three points of problem we solving, solution and then innovation that we could excel at Expo and that's the way to do it. So we really catered what we talked about and how we presented it to that those three categories. um I think, and we'll go and talk into it more, but I think what we were, we we knew we had our validation. um We had the photos. It worked. It was a clear difference. So um just figuring out how to present that was more of the question. But I think our biggest hurdles here were um one, we really wanted to convey to people why this problem mattered. because a lot of projects you have an awesome solution, but then you're like, well why, what's what's the point? And so really hammering that into the very beginning to get people invested. And then I think our biggest problem, or the the biggest question as a team we had about this specific project is that since we were making a new retractor set, but there are already current retractors, really hammering home to people why our solutions are innovative was our biggest challenge between these three points.
00:20:47
Speaker
Part of our preparation included having the rubric out in front of us. Whenever one of us was giving an example pitch, the rest of us were looking at the rubric asking, did you hit on a talking point for why is the solution creative? Did you impressed upon the impact of the project. And if any of us felt that we hadn't done that category justice, we paused, we figured out what else do we need to bring into conversation to make our answer better. I think the way we ended up doing some pitch practice was on the first day, we just kind of gave general talking points. We had very rapid ideas of the way we wanted to present it. And then once we finalized key talking points based on what the rubric
00:21:32
Speaker
had because we did want to win. We wanted to do our job well. We went home and then each came up with our own individualized pitches with like a script that we had each come up with just to have like a memorized idea that we came back the next day and gave those, confirmed that everything was straight, talked to friends and family members on if you have no relationship or idea with what the project is, what did you understand from it?
00:22:00
Speaker
There was already some experience with that, that I personally had, just telling my friends about my projects. As the semester went on, they would be like, hey, Miguel, you're in capstone. What is your project about? And I would have to give them this elevator pitch. And at first, it was really rough, because they were like, what's a retractor? And then I have to start all over from the beginning and re-explain everything. And so by the time we got to Expo, I realized that simply talking about something can only get you so far.
00:22:26
Speaker
we all wrote our pitches out to meet the rubric and a lot of us had pitches that lasted three or even four minutes long and everybody knew at the time that we were asked to not make a elevator pitch that was so long and arduous and make the listener feel trapped in the elevator but uh instead i wrote my pitch that day to accompany the poster where i would say And then here we have, and then I'll gesture it to the poster and point to the pictures that we have. Because in my mind I thought pictures tell a thousand words. And that is how I personally approached the communication at Expo.
Adapting Communication for the Expo Environment
00:23:11
Speaker
I would draw someone in from the crowd, I would quickly tell them our problems, how we solved them, and then if they had any questions I would show them the poster.
00:23:20
Speaker
which really quickly communicated a lot of the ideas I was trying to convey on a topic that most people know very little about. But then it was kind of a surprise when we got to capstone with how busy it was. In my head, it was kind of like high school science fair, like the only people who were really gonna show up were like, maybe your parents and like the two judges that are gonna grade you. And then instead of us all presenting as a group in a very calm like matter, we eventually all like separated into like either like pairs or just like individuals.
00:23:54
Speaker
talking at different distances away from the poster. So we all have to adapt to be like, okay, if I'm sitting near the visual prototypes, the physical board, I have to speak in one manner. And if I'm actually this really far into like the hallway, I need to be speaking in a different way. So just learning how to adapt to that was fun, or also knowing when to tap into teammate and be like, hey, can I borrow that really quickly?
00:24:18
Speaker
Just to get a point across. right and One of the things that I just i don't think can be over emphasized to teams preparing for the expo is just how loud, crowded, and hot the expo is. and you You can tell someone that, but it's it's hard to like really understand it and until you're there.
00:24:39
Speaker
I know whenever I'm talking to teams about either 2110 competition or the expo, it's like you have to be loud enough where they can hear you. It is going to be difficult. um You have to project your voice. You have to get closer to them. I see you laughing. Do you have a story? So we when we were practicing, and you might have potentially noticed in this podcast, Sun has a relatively soft-spoken individual.
00:25:06
Speaker
And so we, you know, upstairs, kind of by the microwave area, I sat in a chair in the corner, like off to the side of the corner with Sunna in front of the poster presenting, and of course we realized you'd be talking more one-on-one, but I sat back in the room, okay Sunna, present, and if I can't hear you,
00:25:22
Speaker
um then you need to be louder. um But we, I think we also, several of us, I have experience through, I do campus tours through Admissions and we do lots of tours for the invention studio, all of us. um So in the end, it it was really just making sure that when we're projecting, we can, we can hear. I feel like the difference is like on a tour for the invention studio, I'm basically bouncing off the walls. I'm like, look at this, look at that. And I did want to appear much more calm and professional for a capstone, but then It was kind of just finding the fun in the presentation itself was what helped me along the way, being like like, oh wait, I'm really proud of the work we did. I'm excited. I want other people to be excited and just realizing it was okay for me to like not have to present it like I'm talking to my advisor on a thesis. right
00:26:10
Speaker
was good. yeah Then it got louder. It was great. Wait, yeah you did awesome. But yeah, I think making sure we, ah because several of us have been to capstone just as like fun look around from previous years. And so I think understanding that is really important because if they can't hear you, then they, there's no point. Right. It's time, as you said, like, you know, you had a three minute pitch, but you really wanted to get it down to two because it is difficult to sustain listening in a loud environment and actually understanding all the parts of the argument for a long period of time. So I do appreciate that you guys planned that and spent a lot of time thinking about how you're going to design this informational experience for your audience in a way that was easily consumable.
00:26:57
Speaker
The first aspect of the category is the problem. You got to tell us that this is a problem worth solving.
Communicating the Urgency of Healthcare Problems
00:27:06
Speaker
So as you guys were preparing for the expo, what kinds of decisions did your team have to make in order to design how you would convey the significance of your problem? I think it does help that this was a healthcare problem. It's easy for a person to relate with a problem they might be having or have already experienced in their lifetime.
00:27:27
Speaker
um Maybe they have a family member stopping from arthritis or they were a college athlete. We wanted to boil it down to even though we addressed several, we addressed lots of things through our design process, but we realized in the end the three main things that we wanted to focus on and that we really succeeded in and excelled in. We're fixing the ergonomics of the tools.
00:27:48
Speaker
fixing exposure. So from the Canaveral photos, just how much more you got from our tools. And then lastly, the manufacturing of it. And so boiling it down kind of into those three easily like hit on points, I think is really important. And then as someone who did the market research for essentially the impact and justification section of it, understanding, I work very well with metrics data. So realizing why, why You know, not just, okay, there's a problem, great. The tools aren't great. Awesome. Like, why is it important to fix this now? Like, who cares about shoulder surgeries? And shoulder surgeries are actually, while they're not the most, in terms of quantity, done, joint replacements in the country, they're the fastest growing. And so that's really why this is a immediate and necessary problem.
00:28:37
Speaker
And that comes a lot from just the aging population. As you get older people, that is a really big um grouping that does these surgeries. Also, we really wanted to emphasize not just that that point, but also why, like Miguel mentioned earlier, centering on the patient of of why it's important for them because it's fastest growing and there's now, hence then, a lot more in the future coming with that. And then with the problem itself,
00:29:03
Speaker
Making sure that since each of those points, or ergonomics, um the exposure, and then the manufacturing, that's kind of each section of our poster, right? So we talk about manufacturing through our prototyping process. We talk about our exposure through the cadaver validation, and then our ergonomics, we had a whole validation test on that. And really, that gave us the basis to lead into the innovation of the end, because our biggest innovations were in the exposure And then in the ergonomics with our rolled handle and different things like that. So if you're setting yourself up for not only someone having questions about those things, which then sets you up for good innovation later on, but also you're giving someone a precedent of
00:29:43
Speaker
Why am I talking about this innovation? Okay, now I understand the problem it's addressing and why I should care about that problem. I might also want to add that something we did really well at the Expo was the props that Lana 3D printed. We had a stand with a human bone printed out on a human shoulder, printed out where they would connect, and the area that the surgery happens. And then we would take these and hold them up to people and be like, this is your shoulder. So now they're invested in the surgery being a success, otherwise they don't want their shoulder to be messed up. It's also a thing of this could happen to you one day, and don't you want the surgeon to be using the better tools to your surgery? Not the old tools that are hard to hold for hours on end.
00:30:28
Speaker
The way we would close our presentation, just kind of like tying back like what all of it was about was we would say, like and our goal was to help surgeons help you, right? Just re-emphasizing that like connection with every visitor. I mean, hopefully they don't need shoulder surgery. I wish all of them like a very long and like healthy life, but if they ever do need it, let the people who are in the room with them have the best tools they need to succeed.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. You can connect with everyone on a personal level, but it also sounds that the three different categories you identified, manufacturing, ergonomics or economic And then exposure. And exposure are also different problems worth solving to different kinds of audiences. So if you had someone who's interested in health come up versus if you had someone who's just a mechanical engineer, you would have a way to hook them in. One of our judges had a very strong business background.
00:31:30
Speaker
He primarily asked us questions about manufacturing, about cost, about scalability. So I'm really glad we practiced that part of the presentation because that wasn't an aspect that was stressed throughout the semester. Really, it was about getting the products to work. yeah And I think on the manufacturing front too, one of the things that I think we did very well is we could have just said all of our retractors are sheet metal bent and don't require welding, and the previous ones do, and then moved on, don't have anything there.
Demonstrating Feasibility and Cost-Effectiveness
00:32:00
Speaker
But by working them through our prototyping process, I think it gives more weight to us, not only being a knowledgeable point to give this manufacturing recommendation, but also then they see it themselves of
00:32:15
Speaker
It's really, you know, obviously it would be done slightly differently at large scale. You know, you wouldn't just have Miguel and Max bending things themselves. But it gives a sense of the fact of, oh, like I now have watched this little, we had ah a slideshow of our prototyping process next to the booth and I can now see this retractor go from a piece of sheet metal all the way to the things that are now sitting on the table in front of me.
00:32:37
Speaker
And I think it really emphasized how easy it was to manufacture, and even at that larger scale, we explained that, but lots of it is a very similar process. And so realizing, shoot, like this is something that's very, very doable, I think really emphasized that third point.
00:32:54
Speaker
The first part of the rubric is problem. Got to tell me why this is a project worth spending a semester on. Once you have convinced me it's a problem, you you have to show me that you have solved this problem. So the next part of the rubric is the solution. ah How did your team decide the best way or metrics to argue that your solution works?
00:33:16
Speaker
I'll be honest, I think we just looked at every metric and tested our designs in every way that we could conceive of. We tested the mechanics of our retractors. We literally put it in a massive rig, or I think Sana, right? Sana, do you want to talk about that? Oh yeah, I can talk about that. When Miguel says every metric, it's looking at our problem statement and being, okay, ergonomics. Okay, how do we test for ergonomics?
00:33:41
Speaker
Okay, um how do we test for exposure? Which was the cadaver lab testing we'll talk about in a little bit. And then, okay, when we're not at a cadaver lab, can we talk about, can we simulate tissue damage? And then, hey, is it gonna break when it's in the body? So we need to figure out when does the retractor break? We know it's strong steel, but how strong is it? So we actually got to use another makerspace called the mill, they're the material science space. um And that space is full of like measurement and characterization equipment. its They have a machine called an instrument. Basically, it's a machine that slowly lowers, it's kind of like a hydraulic press with a point on it. It just applies a load on a piece of metal and you just track when the metal bends until it breaks. And you just get a lot of information on how a larger piece would respond to that.
00:34:40
Speaker
And so from that test, we were able to determine with certainty that our design would not break in the body. And then through some other tests that were ran by other team members, we looked at the ergonomics and the exposure. Yeah, I think ah the biggest point here is we realized for solution that not only won the teams that do very well at Expo, but two for our own you know sake of covering everything that we're introducing to them, we needed to have proved that every single thing works and is validated in some way. And so that's how we address this. But I think when we were trying to boil it down to a very short presentation, the main takeaway we wanted people to look at was, yes, we covered ergonomics. Yes, we covered force testing, but you know, check, check, check. But that could have a lab because telling someone you've done three surgeries with these tools, the ones you see on the table in front of you,
00:35:30
Speaker
and we're able to get full exposure and also implant in two of them. And mind you, with one of those surgeries being done just by ah two team members and a surgeon in training, it really, I think, gives a big weight to, you know, this is what they're actually going to be used in and we use them in that manner and they succeeded. And there's really no, ah there's nothing anybody could say then to that that says, okay, They did not work. um Right. We're talking about like how easy the tools are used, easy to use because inexperienced or less experienced individuals are using. The surgeon we work with was still a very highly competent. He was phenomenal. yes But we also got the retractors in the hands of our main surgical consultant. Every round of prototyping, we put them in his hands. He gave us his feedback and then he performed a cadaver surgery with them. like this is
00:36:24
Speaker
a leading expert in his field and he was happy with what we made, right? And if he says that, then we it's much easier for us to prove when it's already in like the client's hand. If people were okay looking at photos, I think, and i this will be the last point here, is the most impactful thing to me is the exposure, both presented by Restore3D and through our ah research, that really is the main crux of this. that Yes, you want people to hold it well and things like that and you want to make it easier to manufacture, but getting that good exposure was really their primary goal in the onset of this project. And seeing the side-by-side pictures of current retractors being used and then our retractors being used, I think you don't even need to understand what is going on. You can just see the difference there. And I think that really nails it home. And like Miguel said earlier, pictures are worth a thousand words. and so
00:37:17
Speaker
that I think was a very good way to present things. As engineers, were you guys comfortable with this more sort of visual evidence as opposed to numerical data, or did you have to sort of work yourself up to be like, okay, this is the best way to talk about our solution?
00:37:37
Speaker
Well, at first we tried to get more information on how we should move forward with our design by simply asking our consultant from Restore3D. Well, Dr. Krishnan was the the leading shoulder joint replacement surgeon that we had spoken to, and we had sketches of our initial designs. and We had ideas and we wanted to ask him about it and he refused to tell us because he didn't want to look at pictures. He wanted to hold something in his hand.
00:38:09
Speaker
So that wasn't really something that we could quantify and tell him in numbers or talk about material properties of, oh, this metal is going to be heavier and it's going to be this thick, which is the same as your other tools. He didn't really care. The only thing he cared about was that experience of actually using the tool, not hearing about it.
00:38:31
Speaker
my my immediate thoughts for validation of those photos was okay now I'm going to you know toss it to the online software you can measure the little areas around compare the two so I did initially think we're gonna need this and you need the numbers there but I think with if it had been close maybe but honestly just sometimes And I think this is something I've learned through my four years here and also just from being in different fields with different people is sometimes throwing more technical jargon into things, especially, you know, for our back end, of course, our report has plenty of technical
Balancing Technical Data and Visual Communication
00:39:06
Speaker
specifications in it. But for something like the Expo, where you have that vast range of audience members, making something more technical than it needs to be doesn't it it some people I think maybe thinks it gives you validity to
00:39:19
Speaker
you know, your intelligence or why something works or things like that. But lots of times it just makes it more confusing for an audience. And so since we had what we needed from these photos, I think we all felt that it for the purposes of the expo, it would have been counterproductive to add more technical ah mumbo-jumbo on top of it. Sometimes things are just so apparent with what they're trying to convey. You don't need to look for justification in the numbers. You can tell.
00:39:49
Speaker
Did this work? Did this not work? I looked at the photos and it was a stark difference. Like not even close, but there must be a really difficult part of being an engineer is that the different clients that you'll serve will care about different metrics and you have to kind of adapt to their metrics. It was rough not being able to have Complete metrics of success. I think it was our initial, like, we didn't know how to quantify our data. or I guess we have quantifiable metrics of success. We are really left to define our own method of success. What makes our product work? Well, we will tell you what makes our product work.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, and I think one great thing about, um I mean, it's a podcast, we're not gonna read you through the whole report, but one great thing about the report or other methods of conveying this is that for those audiences that do want that more technical data, like it's in the spec sheet there. like We have whole paragraphs written on on more technical things. um So I think in the end, the the positives for us were we whatever question we got asked from whatever audience, whether they wanted something more qualitative, something more quantitative,
00:41:04
Speaker
We aim to finish the project in time that we would have the opportunity and time to curate all that information to have it available um and fleshed out enough to provide to whatever the audience might want. And I think that was really helpful as opposed to just we're a technical project, we have technical information, or being a, we're a qualitative product, we just have qualitative information because then Whatever way you best digest things or best feel validated in things whether it's quantitative or more qualitative We we had options for both of those So let's talk about the cadaver photos that was I think for me as but someone who's not an engineer I
00:41:47
Speaker
That was the clearest representation that this works. And I think that's probably like one what your doctor who commissioned this project also is like, I can see what I need to see to do this surgery. But can you talk a little bit about how this was a difficult communication decision for you and whether or not you're going to use these at the expo? When we were deciding whether or not to include these photos, it wasn't a question of if. We knew how important it was to the success of our product to show the clear difference between the old tools exposing and the new tools exposing. We weren't going to go to this cadaver lab in person and take photos of the result and not show people. We knew we had to show people. The question was really how to show them what was the most appropriate way to do this. Did you consider putting them on the poster?
00:42:35
Speaker
Honestly, not really. quickly yeah Both from a concept of our audience not wanting to, because we realize it it is both a heavy topic and... It's pretty explicit. it's like you know you have You have children like walking around, you have people who are not comfortable with looking at images of gore.
00:42:54
Speaker
Well, and I mean, I wouldn't call it war. It was a very medical photo, but it is still human-oriented. Exactly. And and also, it's so it's not just the audience, but also in respect to ah the individuals who have ah both you know allowed us to use um ah essentially the people that made this possible. And there's a certain level of respect that It's why you know you don't see them posted all over social media. Yes, our poster is posted enough and someone can now scan that QR code, but we wanted to make sure not only to have the QR code as a barrier, but also the first page when you scan it um as a new individual, it says, hey. okay I know you know I scanned it for you, so you get to see it, but essentially it says, hey, could I have a lot of photos? Here's a warning of what you're about to see, and you know we really appreciate
00:43:43
Speaker
what the opportunity we've been given with this because we realize, yeah, there's there's just a lot of understanding you have to go of. It's it's not it just some, they're humans too, you know, in the end and and wanted to pay them their due respect as well as the audience members the respect of if they wanted to see it they could see it but also it's it's their choice in the end and which is why we have the physical problems but yeah so I don't think we ever considered actually putting it on the poster in an explicit manner both from talking to restore 3D and also from consulting with our class we used the QR code during our last presentation as like a ah test run for Expo and they really liked some of our early presentations even just mentioning that part of the surgery was a bone being popped out of position did
00:44:33
Speaker
create a reaction from audience members and so pretty early on we were pretty mindful of how people would respond to the topic of conversation because they kind of are a captive audience. As someone who who saw your presentation and the cadaver photos as a part of it, I will say that I thought that it was all completely respectful.
00:44:57
Speaker
thinking that these people who donated their bodies to science, I can see what you did with it to be very celebratory of their donation and trying to further science, further innovation, and be excited about the prospect that while they've left our world, they're continuing to contribute to it.
00:45:38
Speaker
Please tune in next time for part two.