Intro to the Team
For my engineering minor, I completed a capstone project on a multi-disciplinary team of finance, mechanical engineering, and biomedical engineering students. I was the solo industrial design student on the project for the first year of its two year duration and served as the team lead and secretary.
Experience Shadowing
As a team we spent six months shadowing in the trauma bay. We prepared discussion guides prior to our visits and would conduct informal interviews with the surgeons, residents, and nurses.
Problem Space
Our goal was to identify a problem space narrow enough to design a novel medical device. Our initial design direction was already too saturated with IP so we underwent a full project re-direct halfway through the year.
Throughout our shadowing, we became subject matter experts as much as we could, and even had the chance to participate in a simulated training exercise for the procedure we had been observing all year. The image on the right is me completing the procedure for the first time (on a dummy, of course.)
Skills Gained
As a part of this project, I have strengthened my ability to lead a team, conduct large amounts of research, define and rank user needs, research patent landscapes, and prepare for client meetings.
In addition, I know more about ultrasound machines, arteries, and trauma bay procedure than I ever thought I would. If you're curious to hear more about this experience, I'd love to talk your ear off.