Aerecens

BACKGROUND​

This project was as part of my work at InnovationSpace at ASU:

InnovationSpace is a transformative experience, where students build the skills of the future and develop their capacity for collaboration and innovation as they produce extraordinary projects.

TOPIC: Putting Data and Technology to Use for Community Health

It is a group project to tackle the issue of low air quality in southern phoenix led by Prof. Berbes. The team is multidisciplinary and in Fall 2021 we explore the issue by closely working together and conducting extensive interviews with community. We even have a website which discusses our journey through working with different stakeholders, etc.

My background in engineering has prepared me to approach technical issues with ease but I have not worked on a community-oriented project. I wanted to work on this topic to achieve that.

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SERVICE-LEARNING EXPERIENCE

This work enabled me to gain expertise in non-engineering design and creative aspect of innovation. Key components include mastery of ideation and creative development, framing strategic questions and success indicators for prototyping of services or products, evaluation of feedback and iteration of progressively more promising ideas, and evaluation of their innovations measured against the success indicators they developed.

At the conclusion of this project, we are expected to do the following:

1. Scope and frame unstructured challenges in the community health project.

2. Visualize, through mapping, the systems involved in complex challenges

3. Understand principles of innovation, biomimicry and sustainability, and apply them to create progressive solutions that incorporate insights from the disciplines of design, business, sustainability and engineering

4. Acquire valuable experience of working in transdisciplinary teams

5. Effectively communicate across disciplines to accomplish a common goal

6. Develop and persuasively communicate product proposals

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PROJECT DETAILS

This entire service-learning experience is divided into 4 phases:

Phase One

Here we explore the topic in detail and generate the foundational research body. We set individual and team goals and do a thorough literature review. The literature review has been indexed to help us sort through our analysis in future. We completed a PESTEL analysis of the problem and Popular media review.

All these deliverables we recorded in the project website.

Phase Two

In this phase, we explore the human factors of the problem. We conduct extensive interviews and have used that to formulate problem statements. The final presentation has been uploaded to our website.

Phase Three

Here, we do in-depth brainstorming at various levels: individual, group and even cohort. New techniques were introduced which helped us refine our problem statements.

Phase Four

In the final phase, we sort through our ideas and generate a cluster map to further refine our goals. The central themes were identified, and results were published on the website.