the UBC Fundamentals of Sustainable Design final project challenges students to solve a real-world sustainable engineering problem while developing critical professional skills. We learned to apply engineering knowledge, demonstrate problem-solving abilities, and integrate sustainability principles across environmental, economic, and societal contexts. The project focuses on enhancing technical expertise, project management skills, teamwork, leadership, and communication—preparing students for professional engineering practice.


what did we do?

our team was given a series of engineering problems, and we decided to address mining-related water contamination in British Columbia. We started with identifying existing solutions, ideating and developing novel solutions, and using data-driven methods to select a final novel solution to prototype. 

prototyping

I led the prototyping and testing phase of this project, evaluating the two final solutions that we selected:

while the mobile lab could provide a greater degree of precision, we were worried that the sensitive equipment inside wouldn't be able survive the bumpy mining roads without significant modification to the trailer. In order to test this, we used a phone accelerometer to measure the vibration experienced by rolling down a bumpy road, and found that the acceleration values exceeded the margin of safety for accurate instrument use. 


we continued with medium-fidelity testing of the kit. Our riskiest assumption regarded whether or not the ease-of-use could be significantly increased, and our prototype revolved around that. The physical aspect of the prototype was a rugged plastic case with an off-the-shelf testing kit, with the main modification being the instructions and user experience. Initially, a paper sheet was used to record measurements, which proved to be a bottleneck. In response, I developed a python program to display instructions, record measurements, and export to spreadsheet software.