Power Bars

This project was one of the most important in my development as an engineer. Not only did it allow me to come up with a unique design process, but it also allowed me to practice design brainstorming, critical judgement, decision making, and writing conceptual design briefs. This was the second stage of the Praxis I project, where we were given a problem that was outlined by another group. We had to come up with at least 3 conceptual designs to solve that solution and ultimately select one of them. My group was given the task to design a new power bar that would allow room for extra large adapters that sometimes cover other outlets. The first thing that we did was brainstorm possible solutions, which was when I first used a technique that I still like to apply to my design process now - outside the box thinking. When I say outside the box thinking, I mean very outside the box thinking. So for this design, I proposed to the group "Why don't we make a death star out of outlets?" At first it sounds completely ridiculous, but then when we actually started talking about it, and making it more feasible, it became one of our three primary conceptual designs, (see sketch above).This project also gave me opportunity to work on selection processes, which our group used to select a final design. We used both Pugh's selection charts and a weighted decision matrix and it was my first time using both of those, though I continue to when I need to select between close-ranking designs.