GEQ1000P compiled (BS Level UP)

Reflection Assignment

I am from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and although I am unsure of what to major in, I am considering Psychology or Sociology . The segments I have chosen to talk about are Design and Engineering. 

Working with a partner in the Design segment to build their ideal wallet was useful because it allowed me to organise a series of questions in order to empathise with my partner. The prompts in the worksheet given, and the examples in the videos helped to shape an idea of what exactly my partner wanted, and why they wanted it. Exploring the motivations behind someone's wants and desires is useful in Psychology because it allows us to profile people, and diagnose them accurately. Only then, can the effective treatment be tailored to them, just as the wallet was tailored to my partner's needs. Additionally, it allowed me to guide my partner in deciding what she wanted, as at first she was quite unsure. This was done when I continually asked her the reasons for the features on her wallet. At times, she changed her mind after reflecting, and realising (after I showed her the first sketch) that some of the things she wanted were strictly because they were features on what she thought would have to be in a wallet. The design section not only focused on physical design but also on systems of thinking, by questioning what the most effective or creative way to carry out a task is. This forced me to question existing systems, and example of which would be why many hawker stores have vertical and straight queues whilst some chain restaurants make their queues snake around a small area in a zig-zag formation. This element of putting existing conventions to criticism reflects one of the main concepts in sociology, which is that in order to objectively analyse a group of people, we must see the strange in the familiar. I was taught in my sociology introduction module that this means viewing the everyday world from a more critical standpoint. It is only through this, that positive social change is made possible; and just because something is common, does not make it effective or "morally right"

In the engineering segment, I learned about how engineers strive to bridge the gap between theories and reality, by actualising products and seeing their real world applications. This is relevant to me because it attacks the question of how to go about formulating something for a specific target audience using a holistic approach. In our tutorials, the cars we engineered were different based on who we were making them for and limitations we had. In the same way, a social or psychological experiment meant for children cannot be completely recycled for an adult test group due to factors like attention span, motor skill variability and cost efficiency. Engineering involves a lot of anticipation of problems before they happen, and accounting for them, so in the same way, I learnt to be more conscientious when formulating experiments on people, such as by double blinding them to reduce bias. Ultimately, what drives Sociology and Psychology is the fact that every individual is unique. Completing this module reinforced my faith in pursuing a university degree, as I was able to better see its relevance manifested in the culture of consumerism we live in today. It explains a lot more about why we have so many variations of the same products (eg. toothbrushes)and by extension, machines needed to produce them even though they seemingly perform the same basic functions(brushing teeth).  This is because individuals have unique needs to be fulfilled, such that the same object in one context may have a completely different use in another. It is humanity's drive towards fulfilling our needs through creativity(Design) and efficiency (Engineering), which propels us towards the improvement not only in the things we make, but also in the way we interact with each other, as studied in sociology and psychology. 

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Design forum post

Firstly, let me just state the disclaimer that I am an FASS student with little to no aesthetic ability whatsover and that i gave that up at primary school. I think I was absent for the tutorial where we were supposed to be paired up, so I ended up using one of my friends as a partner. 

I found that it was easy for me to empathize with her because she's very similar to me (we both want similar things in wallets functionally), but our clothing styles and aesthetic preferences are like chalk and cheese. This design activity was interesting to me because I was able to gain deeper insight as to how a person's personality shines through in every aspect of their life, even the small ones. The clothes that someone wears or the choices they make in life reflect deeply their conscious or subconscious motivations in life. In comparing myself to her, I realised that I was a lot more laid back in terms of my wallet preferences, whereas she put a great deal of care into describing to me what she wanted; and this reflects how she is generally a more uptight person than me in everyday life. For example, I never knew that she had placed so much importance on photographs until she told me about why they were important to her. In telling me this, I was able to holistically understand her, in that I saw her need for the photos on the wallet as intrinsic to her motivations in life, rather than superficially dismissing it as her being an extrovert. 

Creative or design thinking has always come easy to me in the sense that I've had no problems generating ideas in groups that seem to be quite out of the box or eccentric, but having it explained in a systematic process helped a lot with one very common piece of feedback i always seem to receive from groupmates: that I am Very Very Disorganised. The breaking down of steps in the wallet worksheet helped me to lay out the priorities first. I usually conceptualize my ideas in my brain and have a difficult time explaining or marketing the ideas to groupmates at first simply because I have problems expressing myself in some situations. By forcing me to write down and draw (as best I could) exactly what I saw in my head, I could tangibly see how coherent (or incoherent) my ideas were. This gave me a chance to regroup my ideas in my own head, and organise them to make them more palatable to my partner. Additionally, the lecture videos and readings (especially the distinction between imaginal thoughts and imaginative thoughts) assisted me in my metacognition: understanding how I generate the ideas I do (usually mixing things I've experienced together in real life and modifying it to the situation or user) provided me with a skeleton to work with when generating ideas for future projects. This is opposed to what I usually did which is rely on my gut instinct. I also found that although an idea I come up with can seem extremely successful in the moment, there truly is no such thing as an ideal product, as something I thought was amazing may not have suited my partner's needs at all. 

Engineering Forum Post

A fun fact i remember learning about in a chinese textbook somewhere deep in my repressed memory is that Thomas Edison was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. ... Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."

I think that failure is paramount to engineering a good product/ structure because with each failure, analysis of what went wrong will reveal more factors which might make the structure vulnerable. This allows engineers to make adjustments/reinforcements so that when the product is released for commercial or domestic use, the probility of accidents caused wil be at a minimum. Of course, it is impossible to reduce this probability to zero, since it is impossible to anticipate every infinte problem that might happen. Many dysfunctions in engineering may occur due to pure conincidence, though usually this is not the case. In addition to the human error of being unable to predict every single threat, there is also the issue of cost to me considered.

Engineering projects funded by governemtns or private entitities constantly have to balance their Cost-failure analysis. After all, it seems a little counterproductive to ask a company to sponsor failures. There is also the question of ethics, such as when products are tested on humans and can potentially harm them. One of Singapore's most famous catastrophes is the Bukit Ho Swee fires. In this case, the tension between money and safety can be clearly seen as one of the factors for the fire was that there were many improper fire safety practices, and kampongs were built so cramped and close to each other than it was easy for fires to spread. The aftermath of world war 2 had left singapore politically messy and financial in trouble, thus contributing to the fire. Thus , when HDBs were built, engineers learnt from this mistake by using their foresight in designing buildings which were not as prone to fire hazards.

Often times, engineering disasters cannot be attributed to 1 factor alone (eg. human negligence/ natural disaster/ lack of foresight/ lack of funding) but rather usually a combination of some. Therefore, it is important as an engineer to always voice doubts when they arise, as more brains at work generate greater anticipation of vulnerabilities. As the saying goes, neccessity of the mother of invention. But i'd like to put my own spin on this phrase, espcially after learning about engineering in this module: failure is the father of improvement. i think this phrase relates not only to engineering but also to trials in real life which make us stronger as people. Hence, we should not see engineering failures as a bad thing (unless they negatively affect someone's livelihood) but more as a stepping stone to making a product stronger.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukit_Ho_Swee_Fire#Background