Reflection: Victor Tse

l If I Knew Then What I Know Now

Through active participation throughout the engineering design process, I have
come to recognise how significant the gap is between knowing the theory, and
actually applying it in a practical and creative manner. If I had known how
significant this gap was when I first started this course, I would have ensured
our team planning was much more comprehensive by ensuring that we had
considered all areas where failure could occur. By doing this in the planning
stages, we could have responded to any issues found during testing faster as we
would already be familiarised with them and have solutions considered.
With our initial battery designs for instance, although we knew the theory well,
we were not particularly experienced with implementing it in an efficient and
consistent manner in the labs. As a result we kept making mistakes that resulted
in inconsistent power results in our cell design. Over time however, our weekly
reflections in our meetings became more comprehensive and we were able to
fully recognise our mistakes and learn from them. Consequently our final design
achieved very consistent results.
The same applies for our car design, as we were very slow at responding to any
issues that arose during testing. This was because we found it incredibly
difficult to work around the constraints of the lego pieces, in particular towards
how to securely hold the motor and aligning the gear ratio to fit with the chassis.
While we understood concepts like traction and centre of mass, we did not
know of a quantitative means of measuring and assessing these properties so a
lot of it became trial and error, which again led to inconsistency.
We would have performed much better in the competition if we were not
constantly short on time in the labs as a result of inconsistent battery design,
which meant we did not test its performance with the car as comprehensively as
we would have liked.
My 10 words of advice for next semesters class would be: ensure youve
considered all possible areas where failure could occur.

l Plan for Procrastination

The pace of our efforts was not as quick as we would have liked; however I do
not believe it was due to procrastination, as I will explain below.
Our conceptual design and testing in the labs in earlier weeks was quite slow (as
mentioned previously); however I believe that this was because we were
overwhelmed by the scope of the task rather than due to procrastination. Our
early progress in design and testing stalled because we did not know how to go
about doing the task and as a result we were lacking creative ideas to test. In

later weeks we were plagued with issues of consistency and reliability of our
cell and car designs. However our slow progress here was more a result of
inexperience rather than a product of procrastination.
I believe that everyone in our team was working really hard all throughout
semester, so although our final results in the competition were not as high as we
would have liked, I am still very satisfied with how we went in the course in
terms of how we were able to come up with a working solution (we just needed
more time for testing and minor tweaking), how we were able to work well
together as a team, and everything we learnt regarding engineering design.

l Design for Success

I believe our team worked well together over the entire course. Although we
were constantly plagued by time constraints, we were still able to come up with
a working solution to meet all the deadlines for all the tasks.
As mentioned previously, our only critical issues were a lack of creativity in
early weeks and inexperience. Over my next big engineering project, I will
make sure that our team planning for labs is much more comprehensive.
This could have been achieved in our current project for instance by investing
more time into researching and brainstorming ideas to fully understand the
scope of the problem statement and for thoroughness in the consideration of all
possible battery and car designs. We could have also taken materials out of the
lab to construct the battery at home, or requested to take the lego kit outside the
lab such that we could have had more time to understand the kits limitations
and to build the car. Had we taken this initiative it would have meant more time
spent on testing rather than construction in the labs. Working on it outside lab
hours would have also allowed us to refine our skills and overcome our
inexperiences sooner.

l Your Expectations
This course has met my expectations well, and in turn I believe I have met the
expectations of the course well. Although frustrating and difficult, it has
effectively taught me how to self-learn. I have learnt a lot about batteries. I have
also learnt a lot about car design and all its engineering considerations.
I have developed my communication skills, understanding how to think in terms
of the different perspectives of a client, venture capitalist, and as an engineer.
This has allowed me to improve my teamwork skills I have worked well with
my team and have tried to be as involved as I can be in all team activities.
I have learnt how to think more like an engineer regarding strategies towards
team building and brainstorming, understanding all the considerations needing
to be taken into account during design and testing, and how to make important

management decisions like making the right compromises or the right

approaches in order to get the project done on time.

l Your Feedback
Overall the course was quite good. However I feel that had more
electrochemistry theory been covered as soon as possible in the earlier rather
than later weeks, many teams would not have been so overwhelmed as to how
to approach the task. This would have improved the effectiveness of all teams
by being completely up to date on the electrochemistry theory, effectively
giving them more time to design and test battery ideas.