Solve a World Problem

Our process:

My group for this project was Ally, Melissa, and I. We first decided what problem in the world we wanted to solve. We came up with homelessness because it has a huge negative impact on our world and it is a problem that exists everywhere. Since it would take ages to fully solve the problem of homelessness, we focused on just the bay area, specifically Novato. We came up with so many different solutions, but ended up picking a homeless clinic and a donation center. We thought it would be better if both buildings were on the same lot so we figured we would just buy a piece of land and make the space welcoming and inviting to the homeless and to people who wanted to donate clothes and food to the homeless. We made blueprints and planned our whole design layout on our piece of land. Then we were able to put all of our ideas and information on our slideshow, which we presented to the class to show how we wanted to solve our world problem.

Content:

Engineering Design Cycle:

1. Identify the need- we decided to choose homelessness as our world problem. We focused on the Bay Area but we knew that would be impossible to fully solve so we just started with Novato.
2. Research the problem- we spent a few days annotating articles and researching about our topic. We found so much information on homelessness in the bay area so after we finished our three articles we were able to share everything we learned to one another.
3. Develop possible solutions- we came up with many ideas to help solve our homelessness crisis. These included building a clinic, a shelter, donation centers, etc. But we figured that only one option wouldn't really benefit many of the homeless so we chose a few.
4. Select the most promising solution- we finally decided on building a clinic which would include a job center and many services inside for anyone who needed help. There would also be a donation center built near the clinic for outsiders to drop off clothes or food for any of the homeless who may need them.
5. Construct a prototype- we began our process by finding a lot of land in Novato that would suit our need. Then we found all of our measurements and drew blue prints for each building/office we would have on or land. This included the clinic/job center and our donation center. The total cost for our building plan was about $2.4 million dollars.
6. Test and evaluate prototype- we couldn't really test out our prototype, but we made sure to perfect all of the blueprints and went over what we would put and include in each room/office that would be built in our clinic. We also went over what we would do for each solution we picked.
7. Communicate the design- we made a slideshow and blueprints to show our design plans. We are also planning on spreading the word around town about our donation center so that we can get more people to provide clothing/food for the homeless.
8. Redesign and repeat- we did not completely redesign or repeat our plans, but after receiving feedback from Mr. Williams, we decided that we should make our lot of land seem more welcoming to outsiders. We wanted to make the homeless feel safer, so we put fencing all around our lot and planted flowers and trees with a sports court and hammocks for them to relax and have a good time without worrying about the problems they may be facing right now.

Reflection:

This project was definitely not my favorite but I still thought it was very fun because we got to research a bunch on homelessness, which is a huge problem in our world. I loved my group too so that helped me get through the few weeks we worked on this. This assignment made me realize a bunch of things about me. One of the 6 C's I need to work on for the next project is definitely conscientious learning. I really have to work on managing my time better, especially when I am in a group with my friends. I have learned that I do not work very well being with my friends in a group because we get distracted a lot and end up laughing the whole time instead of getting much work done, so I need to work on being better at this.

Another C I need to work on is critical thinking. I am not very good at this but I never really have been so I need to get better at it. I ask a lot of questions and most of them are dumb questions that I actually know the answer to but I just ask before thinking about it. My critical thinking needs to improve for the next project because that will make me a better teammate to be with.

Although there are many things I need to work on, there are a few C's that I did well on in this project. The first one is communication. My group and I communicated a lot during this project. We may have done it too often and that caused us to get a little behind in things but we were able to use it to our advantage and communicate about who was was responsible for doing what and we finished just in time.

Another C I did good on this project was my character. I made sure to be myself and stay optimistic the whole time so that we could all have fun and not hate on each other. The whole project was a blast because we all had great characters and respected one another for the few weeks we worked on it.