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UN C O N V EN T I O N A L WISDO M
THE PUZZLE SOLVER Matthew Wettergreen ’08, a lecturer and undergraduate student team adviser in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK), has always loved puzzles. As a specialist in bioengineering, prototyping and community building, Wettergreen sees each new engineering task as a puzzle to solve — and an opportunity for interactive learning. Wettergreen, who earned his Ph.D. in bioengineering from Rice, has an eclectic résumé that includes a specialization in biomechanics and organ printing as well as arts management, conference planning and marketing. This spring, Wettergreen and Ann Saterbak, a professor in the practice of bioengineering education and associate dean of engineering education, traveled to Ethiopia’s Jimma University, where they set up prototyping and engineering design workshops for their biomedical engineering program.
WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT TEACHING PROTOTYPING IN ETHIOPIA The types of simple materials that we use in the OEDK 8
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are widely available in the U.S. When I got to Ethiopia, I needed to obtain materials that were going to be widely available there. So I went to the markets in Ethiopia with the singular goal of understanding what materials are available. We walked around for an entire day just looking at what was being sold. What’s remarkable about the Ethiopian markets, or really just the culture, is that they’ve got this great cradle-to-cradle mentality. They don’t acquire, acquire and acquire — they acquire, use, and recycle or sell off. It’s just remarkable to see that there’s so little waste. So I had challenges [learning exercises] for faculty and students that used what was locally available. WHAT’S THE SAME ABOUT TEACHING PROTOTYPING IN ETHIOPIA The vigor with which the students and faculty approached prototyping leads me to believe that building things from scratch with readily available materials is something that is so apparent to everyone that you don’t need to teach it. So if I put
A DA M C R U F T
ON THE NATURE OF LOWFIDELITY PROTOTYPING Low-fidelity prototyping is a system or method of making things with very inexpensive, widely available household items. It’s very useful in the engineering design process. It’s useful for gaining consensus and for brainstorming. It’s also useful for generating functional mechanisms. Here at the OEDK, we have a lowfidelity prototyping kit. Inside are foam blocks, Post-it notes, pipe cleaners, yarn, string, burlap twine, rubber bands, clothespins, markers, tape, scissors, Popsicle sticks, paper clips, note cards, balls, glue and Play-Doh. Also, treasures like whistles and decks of cards. The great thing about lowfidelity prototyping is that no one is expecting it to work, look nice or be well constructed. Nobody says, “that Post-it note looks bad,” because it’s supposed to — that’s the point. Of course it does.