How would you describe your project to your friends and colleagues?

The project from my point of view is a very interesting one. When I describe the project to friends and colleagues, I try to explain to them how we are trying to design a product that can be used to obtain blood pressure without extensive knowledge or training. Also how our design is aimed at replacing the stethoscope, and using a visual component instead of an auditory one.

How would you describe it to a future employer?

As a health care provider, and hopefully an employee of a health care facility, I would describe the project to an employer as an attempt to bring better health care services to rural communities in under developed countries. Knowing that it takes some training and a lot of practice to obtain an accurate blood pressure reading using a stethoscope, my group tried to design a non-electronic blood pressure assist device that would decrease the training need and would give a high accuracy reading for the blood pressure. We did this by trying to change the way the pressure is read in the stethoscope an auditory component is required but for our device we changed it to a visual one thereby reducing the training.

What specific skills and knowledge did you learn from senior biodesign?

The course is intended to be the culmination of our four years in the program. Testing us on how we can bring it all together. I personally have learned a lot from the course, I finally figured out the step by step procedure to design in engineering, also how to use all the knowledge I have gained over the couple of years. I also gained the skill of working with people with different opinions but all working to the same goal.

How can you apply what you discovered and learned to other areas of your life?

I figured I can apply a lot that I have learned to both my personal and professional. I learned how to work with people who have different opinions. Also I learned during this project that no matter what project you are working on you should be open to working with other professionals as their input might actually be useful.

What was your favorite aspect of your project?

My favorite aspect of the project would be the design iterations/brainstorming  sessions we had, although one design was ultimately chosen to be the design for the project, the group did have a lot of fun trying to figure out what we needed to do and also coming up with ideas, whether they were silly or not.

What problems or challenges did you encounter?

This project had its ups, and downs, we actually encountered a few problem. The one that was a little to overcome was making our colleagues; instructor and mentor understand our project and the need for it to be non-electronic. Our group did have its frictions as well as we could not always meet at a time to get everyone together at the same time. We also encountered design challenges lucky some of which we could resolve.

Did the challenges cause you to discover something new about your field of study? 

In a way yes, the most important would be with every project one should always consider “Murphy’s law”. Because although we didn’t have any challenge that halted the project for an extended period of time we did have to deal with a few that we didn’t expect. Also that in this field working with people is paramount so knowing how to do that would be a great skill to poses.

What would you do or change about your project if you could start over again?

If I had the opportunity to work on the project again, this time I do hope with more time and resources, I would like the project to start earlier in the fall semester so the group could actually test different design iterations to see which would best fit the criteria and the design specification of the product.  

What would you like to learn further about your project if you had the time to?

Continue to work on it?

Well though a lot of work went into this project and we still had problems with the end results, the first thing I would like to continue and hopefully complete would be the present design. Making sure that the design works perfectly then working on finding better materials. Also would like to see that the product can be adapted from its primary purpose to something else in the health care field and even maybe also help in even developed country.