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GRACE TEO: Having our students
be prepared to face failure

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is really important,
because I think

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it's essential to
the design process.

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Professor Rob Miller
came in to do a lecture

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on user-centered
design, very early

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on in the semester,
where we basically

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presented them this design model
where you do iterative design.

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Which means you quickly
come up with a prototype,

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you fail as fast as
possible, you figure out

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where everything's
going wrong, and then

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you make a second prototype.

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And you keep going around and
around and around this circle,

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until you reach that
perfect prototype

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at the end of the day.

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And so I think they
knew from the start

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that they were going
to have to just keep

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making things and seeing how
they were going to go wrong.

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So failure became very
[? intrinsic ?] part

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of the design process.

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In fact, we told them
right from the start,

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we expect you to have
three prototypes at least

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by the end of the semester.

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And these are when your
prototypes should be ready by,

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and these are the weeks where
you will get to test them.

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And every week they had to
come back and tell the mentors

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where things went well, and
where things didn't go well,

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according to some set
of success metrics.

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WILLIAM LI: Yeah,
I think the design

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review of these mid-term
panels were really just that.

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To try to get feedback
on the design,

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or really explain the progress
that they had made so far,

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and so I think that was a
big reason why we did that.

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I think having mentors this
year was helpful on this front

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as well.

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The mentors were pretty
in touch with how

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teams were progressing.

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We had each team fill out
this little form every week

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explaining what was going well
and what they needed help with.

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So a big part of it was
creating the culture

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that it doesn't have to go
perfectly well every week.

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There can be setbacks, there
can be different challenges

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or obstacles to overcome.

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But we're here to
work through them

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and figure out how to
deal with this situation,

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or brainstorm some ideas.

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One of the other
things that we tried

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this year was to
have these lightning

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updates at the end
of every week's lab,

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just to inform the rest
of class where you're at,

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and what you were trying,
what progress you were making.

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I think this maybe
set up a little bit

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of friendly competition, to see
where other projects are at.

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But it also helped
maybe the class

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feel like we're all in
this together, I suppose.

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It's not always
going to be easy.

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Maybe there's
logistics challenges.

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Maybe there's design challenges.

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Maybe there's other
sorts of things.

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So I think students were
pretty open to sharing honestly

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what their progress was,
and what they were doing.

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At least that's
what we tried to do.

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GRACE TEO: We did get feedback
from students, though,

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that the lightning updates
might have been too regular.

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And they did say that it would
have been nice to have it once

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every two weeks
instead of every week,

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and that would just
give them more time

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to work together as a team.

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And we realized too
that, for our students,

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being able to do group
work outside of class

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is actually difficult
because they all

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have such busy schedules.

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So any time they structured
a time within a class

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to just do group work together,
that was really valuable

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for them.