This post is brought to you by Jordi De Jong.
Okay, the explanation for the title is that as we were walking back from visiting our water source for the water purification project, and a group of people on a tram saw us, Nancy waved at them, after a little bit they shouted “Welcome to Mexico!” at us, and we knew we were clocked as foreigners/tourists/etc. Anyway, on to the real stuff.
I don’t have many pictures from this week :(, but I did really enjoy our lectures in the villa this week and our visits to Cántaro Azul. I think learning about the design process in class connected well with hearing about the journey of creating the Mesita Azul. Similarly to what we talked about last week about not getting caught in only the technological aspects of design, a lot of the NGO’s design process was focused on integrating the product successfully into community members’ lives, not improving the technology. For example, they had to adopt numerous strategies to prevent people from returning to contaminated water sources, like adding denim around the water gallon to provide cool or cold water and eliminating a pump from the sanitation bucket to gallon contraption (because people would stop using the sanitation device altogether when the pump broke). It reinforces for me how important human-centered design is, and the importance of context and redesign in putting together a good product — it’s so difficult (dare I say impossible?) to confront a problem out of context and put together a perfect solution first try! Learning about the ENGI 120 project that was meant to help chinampas farmers plant seeds reminded me of that too (full respect on their name); I couldn’t imagine being in their situation trying to come up with a good product/device/design, especially without having been to a chinampa and seeing how the farmers work. We’ve talked a lot about systems since we’ve been in Mexico, and I’m surprised at how they seem to be everywhere — in large-scale institutions, in the design process, and in our daily lives! Nothing exists in isolation, I guess.
Other cool stuff I’ve learned! Talking about what constitutes safe drinking water was baller because I don’t often think about how vague that definition is. It was enlightening to do our own research on regulations for different water contaminants to determine what safe means, and then really interesting to see the different tests and methods that Cántaro Azul employs to check the levels of these contaminants — and what contaminants they prioritize.
Walking to the water source we will have to purify for our project
Aforementioned water source
In terms of starting to work on the design process with my team, I’ve really enjoyed it so far. I definitely was a little nervous to jump into plans for manufacturing and manual-writing, but with the support of my team, research, and Dr. Hunter, I feel much more qualified than I did a week ago! Although our team is one man down currently (RIP Liam, get well soon soldier), we have made good progress on researching the two existing products we hope to combine in a way for our final design plan. I think staying organized and on top of deadlines has been very important for us. And, research — so much research. I am very much looking forward to our interview with our clients this week to get more feedback on the products so we can move more into a design phase!
This week has had ups and downs for me emotionally and physically, but we are so back and will remain so for as long as possible. <3
Our beautiful villa aka home base
Ziplining from today! Told you we were so back