Highlighted Skills
đź’« Design Prototyping
đź’« Teamwork
đź’« Time-management
đź’« Problem Solving
đź’« Oral Communication
Challenges Faced
⚡ Unrealistic Scope
⚡ Limited Experience
⚡ Tunnel vision
The first major project I worked on was the creation of a device to assist in reducing ostomy leaks. We had to address the following limitations:
Originally, my team and I had brainstormed a number of ideas that were extremely ambitious, but unrealistic, in scale. Some of these ideas included: biologically creating a waste coagulant, creating an app to integrate with the ostomy device, and creating medicine to reduce waste acidity. Eventually, we realized that we should adjust our scope to a more practical and realistic solution, which caused us to land on the “catheostomy”, as seen to the right.
Above are images of design concept creation and time management. The bottom image displays a design for a 3d printed tube that was not flexible enough for our final prototype.
A Cathostomy is a mix between a catheter and an ostomy. The tube would collect waste inside of the body and deposit it directly into the bottom of the bag, preventing waste from deteriorating the ostomy seal and thereby reducing leakage. The tube would be installed daily with a numbing agent to the ostomy opening.
This project taught me fundamental design ideas, such as defining a need statement and thinking with an open mind about problems. The general concepts were taught in lecture, but the real learning began during the project itself. When generating ideas, I found myself closing my mind to unique solutions. I was able to acknowledge this, take a short break, and begin to generate ideas again with a clear mind. I also learned how to more effectively research via the usage of first-person accounts, where we had the chance to talk to long-time ostomates in person and ask them about their experience. This experience taught me that there are many details that cannot be found on the internet about the reality of medical devices, such as how our ostomate described his 2 year-long struggle with finding the proper brand of ostomy- something I had never even considered to be a problem. The time frame of the project was also extremely interesting and forced my group and I to think smart and think fast. This ended up with us missing a couple of design flaws along the way, primarily the fact that using a numbing agent repeatedly likely would have numerous negative health outcomes. This failure taught me that I can personally get too caught up in the moment with an idea and focus so much on the details that I don’t notice major flaws in the big picture.