For the first time I saw the content for our midterm, the initial idea came into my mind was doing a physical transformation. Two places we got were Haiti and Egypt. Being inspired by the shape of rainbow, I decided to build a rainbow-like prototype with several strong blowers on one end and a protector made by soft plastics on the other. A tube with air holes on it was built to connect the two ends. However, soon I found out that it was unreliable. It’s unrealistic to find such strong blowers to support people to travel such a long distance. In this case, we changed our mind to give people a reason to transfer from the two places.
By searching related information online, we found that both Haiti and Egypt has large areas of sand. Also, the sanitation condition were not so good in two places and people there were lack of fresh water. In this case, we thought about the idea to use the sands in two places and build a simple and low cost water filter. The final piece consists of the coffee filter at the bottom, then the aquarium gravel, then the activated charcoal, and then beach sand. Since it’s a simple and portable prototype, it’s quite easy and accessible for local people.
I quite enjoy the process of working with my partner. Ideas came out through our discussions. Since my partner and I have different culture background, the way we view things are quite different. In this case, we were able to share our opinions and came to a final idea.
The most important thing I learnt from this project is ‘using another perspective to view things’. It went through a long process before we came to our final idea. And I really enjoyed the thinking and discussion process, the way we exchange our ideas and reach an agreement. Personally, I think I did well in summarize the logic of the whole process of our project (from initial idea to the final product) and presentation. Next time, I will focus more on the details. For instance, how to make our slides look more concise and easy to understand?
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