Showing posts with label Systems Engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Systems Engineering. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 April 2016
The Empathetic Engineer
When I tell people that I study philosophy alongside
engineering, I’m usually faced with remarks about what an odd combination it is
and then questions as to why I chose to do it. I usually have to decide if I’m
going to give them the short explanation or the real one. My short explanation is usually along the
lines of…philosophy is a subject that educates me about the world, and the
people in it, while teaching me how to reason and examine things in a logical
way. This explanation isn’t wrong, but it’s kind of boring and it doesn’t go
the whole way to explain the importance of philosophy, and the influence it has
had on me as an engineering student.
This post is going to act as my full explanation! I intend
to carry around pieces of paper with a link to this page for all those times
I’m asked why I do philosophy. I think it’ll save me a lot of time.
To begin with, what is philosophy?
Like in all philosophy, there isn’t a certain or correct
answer to this question. I apologise to all those engineers who like to know
the answers to everything, philosophy is definitely not for you! In saying
that, you might gain something by thinking about it.
I like to define it using one word: reasoning. You can
expand on this and say it’s the active questioning of ideas and things, the
attempt to understand the world around us, or the art of asking why over and
over again. I think these all mean similar things. You take an idea and reason
with it. You pull it apart, examine it from all angles, question the
fundamental assumptions or ideas surrounding it, try to explain it with logic,
defend or attack it, view it from a different perspective, all these things and
more.
Eventually you might have a clearer idea about it, a
realisation about the way it should be, or a new and unexpected outlook.
This is what my bookshelf looks like! A mix of ethics and engineering, with a hint of Spanish, Harry Potter and modern art.
I think these sorts of outcomes make philosophy an important
subject because it gets you thinking about something that is essential to any
project (or at least any project I want to be a part of): empathy.
When asked what the biggest challenge facing contemporary
society is, CNN reporter and philosopher Nahlah Ayed replied “the erosion of
empathy” (see the New Philosopher link at the end of the post).
There is a growing disconnect between groups of human beings
as global political issues change, technology becomes more influential, and the
disparity in wealth increases. It is easy to ignore many of the terrible things
that are happening to other people in the world (our own country included), but
it is important that we don’t.
Most of us are good at sympathising when we see images or
hear stories of terrible political situations, environmental crises or poverty
in the world, but we’re really bad at empathising. Empathy requires more understanding
than sympathy does.
Obviously, Philosophy doesn’t give you a super power that
allows you to understand every person on the planet, but it does provide you
with better tools to start the process of understanding, and also more
appreciation of that process. It makes you want to learn more about people and
their perspectives by thinking about topics like ethics, human rights,
happiness, utility and responsibility.
This empathy, or understanding, is something that should be
actively involved in every design process. I came across it in a humanitarian
engineering design process from the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Australia
Design Summit in Cambodia this year. Empathising was actually included as a
step in the design process. During the summit, we stayed in a remote village
for 5 days with a family who had never had westerners there before. We asked
questions, got to know the locals, and did the work they do while we were
there.
The understanding we got from that was invaluable. It
allowed us to think of design ideas that were appropriate for them, and also
made us care about their wellbeing that bit more. A lot of design work in
developing countries has failed due to a lack of understanding. A great example
is the play pump in Africa (see the link at the end of this post). To see empathy included in EWB’s
design process is awesome!
This is the human-centred design process EWB provided us with.
Outside of the humanitarian engineering context, this can
apply in any situation. It’s all about connecting with people and using your
skills in a way that empowers them, and gives them something that they actually
want.
For me, exploring the importance of empathy has changed two
main things. First, my approach to design problems. I now ask more questions, I
question the fundamental assumptions provided to me, and I try to make a
connection with the user so I can better understand them. Second, it has
changed the sorts of projects I want to be involved with. I want to be involved
in projects where I can make those special connections with a cause or with a
group of people. I want to be able to satisfy that part of me that is thinking
about the ethics of everything.
The final thought I want to leave you with is about mindfulness.
In a way, I think that philosophy is mindfulness. It’s about being conscious of
everything, all ideas and all people, and trying to make sense of it all. I
think if everyone was a little more mindful, the world would have half as many
problems as it does now.
Emily
P.S. For those interested in exploring a little more, here is
some recommended reading!
New philosopher (#11 Technology): http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/new-issue/
A blog post of mine from 2015 that explores how philosophy
gives engineering context. I look at a project I did on people with hearing
impairments: http://emilyengineer.blogspot.com/2015/05/social-engineering.html
Human centred design: https://eng.anu.edu.au/courses/engn2225/course-files/textbooks/IDEO_Field_Guide.pdf
Tuesday, 19 May 2015
Ready, GET SET, Go!
Last Friday I got to meet 60 girls in College thinking about studying engineering. I was on my best Glambassador behaviour as the ANU hosted these girls for the day. (I prefer the term Glambassador to Ambassador because I feel it better represents me).
We took them around to 4 different workshops relating to renewable energy, systems engineering, humanitarian engineering and biomedical engineering. I spent the day at the renewable energy workshop where we proved that red wind turbines actually do go faster.
Here's a photo of a (pretty cardboard) turbine that a student made. It had an efficiency of two percent! I had to take a photo of the yellow one because the red was just too fast to capture. (For any non-science people, this is a joke and red does not make things go faster).
I never had an opportunity like this. I was asked to speak to the girls at the beginning about why I chose engineering and I realised that it was a reeeeally last minute decision (the day before applications closed) sparked by my encounter with some Canadian engineering students that I met overseas. I had never even realised that engineering was a degree you could study and something you could be a professional in. It sounds stupid now, but the idea was just never presented to me. I was really jealous of these girls last week who were able to see all of these things and also learn about systems engineering too.
I'm definitely going to write an email to my old school telling them to get on board with ANU's Get Set program. It could have saved me a lot of time wondering what I wanted to do! (Not that I regret spending 7 months overseas on my gap year “finding myself”).
I think the ways of getting girls involved in degrees like engineering are a lot simpler than people think. Planting the seed in the girls' mind is all we need to do! They already know they like maths or science or teamwork or whatever it is, but they just need to be shown that these are all things we get to do in engineering!
Love,
Em.
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Project Presentation
Today we tried to put 20 students into our client's shoes for our group project. We began by simulating an office meeting where the "speaker" (me, miming to simulate our hearing-impaired client’s experience of work meetings) was presenting a pie chart on one side of the room while what was being said was being displayed on a projector across the room. The students were trying to watch what I was pointing to on the chart, read the text being displayed across the room, process the information and have an opinion on it simultaneously.
Here's the text and my special pie chart! (I called my character Jemima because she was miming…no one noticed this joke).
In the short presentation, the students couldn't see where/what I was pointing to and read the text at the same time. So, of course, there were no objections after I said a particular table of people were going to fail and I was going to reduce everyone's grades by 30%. Also, no one noticed that the pie chart didn't even add up to 100%...
Luckily, I'm not in control of their grades or any of the technical drawings for our assignment!
Lots of them laughed when I told them what we had done, but it seemed like a really effective way of making them see how serious the problem was.
Below is an "artists impression" of the app we designed. The client can see the transcription of the meeting while watching a video of what's going on around her. Heaps of ideas were tossed around from projector displays to google glass, but this best realised the client's requirements.
I even stole a line from my previous blog ("Social Engineering") for the end of the presentation where we had decided we wanted to "say something profound". Here it is:
"This simple system is important because we're levelling the playing field by allowing someone to demonstrate their ability and not their disability to their co-workers."
And that's how little projects like these are really part of something much, much bigger than they seem.
Love,
Emily
AKA Jemima
Saturday, 2 May 2015
Social Engineering
I had two assignments due this week. While the tasks couldn't have been more different, they were both tackling the same issue - deafness. The first was a structured report containing the functional analysis for my group project (basically what the steps are that a system has to complete to do its job). We're designing a new display system for a transcription process that will allow a deaf employee to participate more effectively in workplace meetings (pretty cool stuff as this is all for a real client). The second was a philosophy paper discussing different definitions of "disability", deafness as a disability and when governments should interfere in disabled persons lives.Here's my group working really hard!
It was a really weird week for me. For the engineering assignment, I had to look at the situation objectively, carry out technical analysis and take a practical approach to the client's issue. However my mind was constantly interrupting me with deep, abstract questions about the state of disability. Is their "disability" just a social problem that's been created by our own failure to adapt the world around them? Is deafness even a disability? What does society owe them? I also wondered whether they identified as deaf or Deaf (yep, deaf with a capital d is a thing - and by thing, I mean a really well developed culture, look it up: http://www.deafculture.com).
At first these questions frustrated me, but as I worked on my philosophy paper, I began to answer these questions and then my answers began to provide context for the engineering project. I don't believe disability is purely a social problem (i.e. something caused by unjustified social attitudes and a world full of design flaws), but I think that governments, of course, have responsibilities to technically-disabled persons to raise awareness about their condition, promote their participation in the work force and invest in adapting the way things function so that normal tasks become easier for them. I realised that these things are exactly what the group project is doing. We're levelling the playing field by allowing someone to more efficiently participate in their workplace. This allows them to demonstrate their ability and not their disability to their co-workers.
Design requirements and optimisation aside, it became clear that the project's goals tap in to a large social movement beyond this one client. The overall motivation for projects like this is to create something that enhances someone's ability to do a desired activity in a way that has the power, however small, to address the unjustified social attitudes surrounding disability and make the world more usable for everybody.
Here's me looking pensive. Please don't take me too seriously.
While it's hard to say whether thinking about these things had a measured impact on the project, I think it was really important to remember why we were doing it (beyond "because our lecturer/boss told us to"). I think it's so easy to forget about what motivates a project. Projects revolve around people, and so often there's a bigger picture to look at.
Every time I start a project, I'm going to ask myself why I'm doing it. I'll look at not only why the client wants me to do it or why it benefits us directly, but why the project is valuable to some bigger idea.
Love from,
Philosophical Emily
Friday, 10 April 2015
Emily's DIY
"Hey, you do Engineering! Can you fix this for me?"
- Everyone, ever.
I'm here to eliminate any preconceptions you might have about me and my ability to fix things.
This is mainly directed at my mum.
"Emily can you make the internet go faster!?"
"Emily, can you fix the barracuda?"
"Emily, can you clean the pool while you're at it?"
They always morph into questions about household chores. Apparently I'm more qualified for those too!
The truth is, I'm no more able to fix the barracuda than my older brothers. My mechanics lecturers have never taken a barracuda apart in front of the class. Perhaps I could understand the theory behind a few of the mechanisms better than most people, but really the only thing that separates me from my brothers is curiosity.
I chose to study Engineering because I'm curious about how systems work. Systems like barracudas, buildings and power plants of course, but also systems made up of humans. I like learning about new systems and I'm definitely more willing than my brothers to start taking something apart and investigating. I just can't guarantee that I can actually make it start working again...
So mum, next time you have something you want me to fix for you, please don't expect me to have some sort of special knowledge. I'll probably be able to figure it out for you, just don't look at me like I have super powers.
I'll leave you with a picture of a fix my housemates and I have inflicted on our house. Our fixes generally consist of hair ribbons holding things together because we're resourceful and fashionable like that!
Here is a ribbon helping our washing machine drain water.
See, Engineering can be pretty!
Love,
Em
Friday, 3 April 2015
Touch Football and Electron Density.
Have you ever missed out on selection in a sports team you think you deserved? Have you ever wondered how someone could possibly have made the cut? How many times have you thought the whole process was biased, unfair or vague?Bec Beath is a touch football superstar and Systems Engineering student at ANU. This year she's out to create a better system for the selection of wingers on a touch football team. Yep, that's engineering. She's using technical tools like a House of Quality, Functional Block Diagrams & Evaluation Matrices, and she'll analyse the requirements, generate TPMs and examine the whole life-cycle of the system.
On the other end of the spectrum, my friend Alex is a physics nerd. We all know them. Sometimes I wish I was one, just because geeking out about physics things looks super impressive to everyone else. However, reading his project description reminded me why I don't study physics...
"I'll be measuring the electron density in the ionosphere to calibrate radio astronomical measurements against Faraday rotation by sending radio waves of known polarisation from a 1U cubist through the ionosphere to the MWF in Western Australia".
Hopefully you're all as lost as I am.
When I asked for simple terms, he said: "measuring stuff in the atmosphere from space".
I still don't understand, but hey at least he seems interested in it.
Another friend is looking at ways to solve common engineering problems on a phone or tablet. (I'm definitely annoyed he didn't make an app for this before I started first year). Other projects include the efficiencies of a video store, home water systems, keyboards or an online tutoring system...
Nothing is off limits for us and it will be really cool to see what comes out of all these projects!
Love,
Emily
Thursday, 2 April 2015
Choosing a Project
Do a project on anything. Literally anything! Just make sure you apply what you've learnt. Oh and it's worth 40% of your grade. Good luck!
- ANU Lecturer
It may not be exactly what my Systems Engineering Lecturer said, but it's a pretty great summary of how it sounded. My first response went something along the lines of: "OMG how can I possibly choose something when my options are everything in the world!?"
It completely changed the way I looked at everything for a week. I walked around finding all the things that could be improved, processes in my life that were inefficient and technologies that didn't suit their purpose. My friend and I got as far as creating a logical flow diagram describing the process by which my dog Frank could successfully eat his dinner (my other dog always steals it). By the end of the week, I was extremely dissatisfied with the quality of everything in my life, but I had a project idea! (No, it wasn't designing a more efficient dinner process for Frank).
I've worked in a medical practice for 3 years, and for anyone that has experience in the profession, you'll know that the connections between medical providers and services around Australia is a complex web of incompatible processes, competing interests and outdated systems. You could pick just about any process or system used in patient care and it would make an awesome assignment because there's such a need for new streamlined systems. I'm going to be looking at referral methods for GPs to specialists over the next few months and assessing their suitability in Australia.
To be able to work on a project that's relevant to your job or your personal life is really exciting. After I selected my topic, I was really disappointed that I wouldn't then be able to investigate all these other things around me that seemed to be falling apart!
Here's a photo of Frank having his dinner stolen by my other dog, Mini. Just in case someone else would like to do a project on preventing that. Thanks!
Emily
Monday, 30 March 2015
Thinking Outside the Box
Last weekend I celebrated 21 years on earth, but also 21 years in my hometown, Canberra. In those years I’ve seen Canberra develop from somewhat of a large country town into a vibrant city. We’ve even got a snazzy new catch phrase! (CBR. Confident. Bold. Ready). And we totally are!
On one of my rides around Lake Burley Griffin, I noticed a new construction site. It looked like it was in its really early phases because everything was still packed up in shipping containers. Six months down the track, I learnt from a friend that the shipping containers weren’t part of the construction phase, they were the actual structure! These containers make up Westside Acton Park, one of Canberra’s solutions to the perennial problem of getting more people to the Canberra lakeside.
They wanted an events centre, so they created this as a place for a rooftop bar, a pop up cafe, drive through coffee shop, some restaurants, a gym and even a BMX bike shop. This kind of out of the box (pun intended) thinking is super exciting to me from management, manufacturing and materials engineering perspectives.
From a manufacturing and materials angle, it’s a really creative challenge and I’m definitely attracted to projects as special and uncommon as this one. A large steel structure is part of the design and they tried to use ready-made or recycled materials. What’s more, it will be demountable so in the end they can just pop it all on a semi-trailer or two!
In terms of project management, this was a collaboration between government, architects, engineers, city planners, construction workers, retail and hospitality outlets. As a systems engineering student, my degree is preparing me to work in diverse teams like these and also work on projects that live in uncharted territory.
#NotJustANUtherEngineer
#NotJustANUtherEngineer
Love,
Emily
Emily
(Originally published on the ANU CECS Student Blog Page: https://cecs.anu.edu.au/studentblogs 12/03/15)
E is for....
Emily.That's me! My name's Emily Campbell and welcome to All Things E! Here is me in my natural state: surrounded by males. However, they don't usually treat me like a princess, these ones just have to because we're genetically related.
I'm currently a third year Engineering student at ANU, however I wouldn't really classify myself as a typical engineer. Don't get me wrong, I love maths, taking things apart and breaking down complex problems, but I also do an Arts degree where I major in Philosophy and I enjoy girly activities like straightening my hair, going shopping with friends and painting my nails horrible shades of pink.
Elements.
To be more precise, I study Systems Engineering. For those who aren't familiar with it, it basically means we look at every element in a system. We work on projects over their whole lifecycle and get to learn about a huge variety of engineering disciplines.
Exploration.
This is the place where I want to share cool engineering projects and experiences of my own, from Canberra and around the world. I want to make everyone look at the world from a Systems Engineering approach!
Each Week.
Yep. And more than once! What a special treat! I hope you don't get sick of me.
Everyone!!
While I do hope that younger students will take some valuable insights away from the blog, I really want this to be something that everyone can enjoy and contribute to. We all have something to learn, a cool new project to hear about or a person to be inspired by and I'm going to find all these things for you.
Wish me luck!
Love always,
Emily
P.S. Here's my name on a breadboard in case that helps you remember it :)
