#a-vision-for-engineering-design

 From the get-go i could feel that this class would be different from the general, monotonous schedule of some other engineering papers. Partly because our lecturer, Andy, was extremely organised online and seemed enthusiastic to teach. Sending an email out before our first class of where to go and when to be there. A good sign which left a great first impression and got me excited to see what was to come. Also when arriving at class for the first time, Andy made it explicitly clear that this was no ordinary class with the usage of a pretty smart hashtag #not-your-typical-engineering-class.

 The first two hour long class consisted of the introduction of our lecturer, course outline and the such but after that was when the similarities with a normal engineering class. Andy probed and prodded us with simple questions that you would think have simple answers but in reality we really had to think about it. “What is Mechatronics? What is Design?”. He encouraged us to not only think and comprehend what was being asked but also question what was being asked. Andy also did this with the Washington accords for example. This line of thinking eventually led to the idea of creativity or more precisely the limitation of creativity as engineers. Why do engineers have to just be a problem solver? Can’t we make up the problems as well as solve them? The thought process intrigued me as Andy had shown us what this class was intended to do. One of the points was “Challenge your (our?) perceptions of the role of engineers in solving large, complex and open ended problems”.

 The format of this class was different as well because Andy gave us a quick exercise after talking for a bit. We were asked to design 3 bridge concepts around a river separating a mining facility and its respective processing plant.

 These were the concepts i came up with, keeping them rough as was encouraged and as we finished Andy said to us why we couldn't just move the plant to the other side of the river. This was to further push us to be creative.