Praxis II - Market707

From the first semester, we move to the second and a new project. We were given the assignment of creating a request for proposal (RFP) for a community in need in the GTA area, which would outline a problem associated with improving the quality of life for that community. This assignment really brought together all the aspects of my design process in such a manner that I was able to review them and reflect on what was and wasn't working for me. It also brought with it a new team, and with that I was able to learn from new team members. In finding a community that we wanted to work with, we looked for communities that genuinely interested us, which is something that is directly related to the quality of work that would be eventually put into the design. We chose Market707 for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it interested us and provided a good opportunity for different problems. My group continued by talking to customers at the market as well as the stall owners themselves, looking for any possible problems that would be able to be framed and eventually be solved. Once we decided on a problem using methods previously added to my design process (see previous posts) we had to write our RFP, which was a daunting and rewarding experience. Creating the RFP gave me insight into the amount of research that must be done in simply coming up with a complete problem that would be able to be solved through engineering design. It re-affirmed the importance of properly framing an engineering problem as well as the need to think creatively to solve that problem. It also introduced new aspects to me, such as the importance of finding reference designs that the solution may be able to be built from, by looking at aspects both in and outside of the field of the problem.