We have reached the end of the first course so quickly that it is hard to believe how fast time flew by. This second blog post will focus more on the reflection of the course through answering some provided questions.
During the final few days, we tackled on a design challenge to prototype an object the would better the experience of being at a third place for a person from Tokyo. Working with my team was a wonderful experience, communication was easy and we worked quite efficiently. However we were not able to unanimously agree on how we would deliver the prototype, whether it is just a proof of concept or it actually being able to deliver the experience. Our object is a bracelet with a charm that vibrates, you would purchase a pair of charms and give one of them to someone you care and supposedly when you touch the charm, the other charm vibrates to show the sense of connection. We could have just bought some charms and bracelets and demonstrated the functionality by acting or saying something about it, but being an engineering major, my ego did not allow me to do that. Sometimes we make choices that are not optimal but best. Therefore, we ended up using an arduino to actually build this functionality. Sometimes it is complicated to align everyone’s interest, but I find it easier to do so by packaging the proposal to appear more altruistic helped a lot. It was somewhat challenging to convince my teammates to believe that using an arduino for the sake of using an arduino is cool and would simply add to the presentation.
This design challenge was indeed not possible had it not being done in Tokyo. The interviewee mentioned that she spends 5 hours gaming on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends, and that her third place is the internet. For me this was quite eye-opening, there are probably people like this in other places, but I am seriously in doubt that there are people as happy as her. Japanese culture is so different from other cultures, it gives a warm place or allows communities of this kind of people to thrive. Due to my limited English abilities, I am not able to accurately deliver my thoughts through words, but I want to underscore that this might just be the new era, this is how some people will live, and it is not weird. This kind of response is only available in Tokyo.
The most enjoyable part of this design challenge was again taking on a harder challenge knowing that the easier version would also suffice. Learning is so much more than receiving a good grade, for me it is more about learning something useful. In this case, for me it was showing respect to Hesam who taught this course. Writing glamorous paragraphs to answer questions with confusing wording and big words is not my forte, however making stuff is. I thought it was necessary for me to go above and beyond in the prototyping process as this is what I like to do and more importantly show the professor that I at least reciprocate some of the effort that he put in this course. On the same note of showing respect, showing up to class or showing up to class on time is so much more than earning the attendance, it is the most basic respect we can show to the professors. Anyways, taking on a harder challenge to show respect was enjoyable.
As mentioned earlier, I am not the best at answering open-ended questions or questions that are too abstract in a bad way, or any kind of question that I am not interested. This weakness made me struggle constantly through the design challenge, from time to time there were questions of this sort asked and we were required to present the answers at the final presentation. I find it challenging to relate the answers to the prototype. I am not clear on how answering those questions would result in a more smooth process of prototyping or a better prototype. Now, however, I think I understand their importance a little more. Answering those questions helps me to draw the big picture in a wider aspect. Prototyping was more general than what I had thought, I thought it was just making cool stuff, but the questions we answered in the notebook make prototyping a more complete process than just making things.
I have reached the word limit and now I would like to write about some general stuff about this trip. Though BUSI courses have certain reputations that make engineering people not like them so much, but trust me, the contents are totally worth the 2 weeks of your time. In a sense I might have learned more than some of my D3 classes. Being able to learn this in Tokyo is just such a luxury and I hope this is available to more people.