What You Make Of It
Make no mistake, today’s engineers are ready to innovate.
The engineering sector is constantly exploring ways in which to produce more responsible design, however, through the difficulties of worldwide economic inequality and the influence of big business, these ambitions are rarely fully realized. As such, the reputation and the practice of the engineer suffers when opportunities to create efficient change in response to the problems that matter the most in the everyday lives of communities and improve their worlds.
What You Make Of It aims to reconsider this position and proposes a way to enable engineers to connect with communities and apply their knowledge and help redefine lives for the better through micro-volunteering.
Imagine a platform where communities could upload a brief, a need for an engineering problem to be solved. On this platform there are hundreds of accredited volunteers from all engineering backgrounds and beyond. A large, international team is assembled to evaluate the problem, each using their area of expertise to make suggestions for a design and its implementation, with each participant spending a specified limited time on the issue. Finally, a smaller team amalgamates and presents a real solution to the community.
The following solution would help to:
- Invigorate engineering practice through the collaborative partnerships and the opportunity to learn and incorporate new knowledge into their work.
- Reinvent communities through innovative engineering through fixing problems defined by communities rather than top-down policy or profit driven businesses.
- Help to raise the reputation and profile of engineers by encouraging an uptake of their skills, helping the worldwide design to be more equal, responsible, and inclusive through experience.
- Fix real world problems in a sustainable way suitable for commercial adaptation as a way of innovating within the engineering sector.
Hello Team,
I agree with Jonathan this is an excellent idea to get engineers thinking about the problems that different communities face and vice versa for people from different cultures to apply there knowledge to these challenges. I like the idea a platform for collaboration and communication and across different sectors, backgrounds and countries. One thing I would like to hear more about is how this international team will work together effectively. When a brief for an engineering problem is given often one of the first stages is optioneering. This is the process by which engineers and stakeholders will review the problem and look at the many different ways to solve it so that a decision can be made to specify a set solution. Having so many minds come together is an incredibly powerful tool to pool knowledge and produce a diverse array of ideas but how will this be narrowed down to prevent a 'data overload' of solutions? Also you mention each participant spending an allocated amount of time on the issue. This is great and quantifies the input of the participants however a big challenge within the engineering industry is effectively passing information on from one party to the next. How will the next participant get an overview of what has been done so far from which to carry on from? I think these could potentially be solved with well managed input from the community which will benefit from the work. Or perhaps a voting system where by each participant can review and vote/rate each others ideas to recommend a solution the the local community.
Overall I think this is a great idea and will give the community as well as the participants the opportunity to upskill there skillset by learning from others. Some thought on the logistics for the platform will go a long way.
Hi everyone, thanks for uploading your really interesting concept note. Please see some feedback below.
What worked well: The concept provides a useful platform for engineers to crowdsolve ideas and develop/practice their skills in global responsibility in a context that is defined by the communities facing the challenges. The platform also provides a great opportunity for a network of engineers to learn from each other and collaborate.
Even better it: You have framed well the contributions of engineers globally crowdsolving and collaborating to generate ideas and solutions in meeting a targeted challenge area relevant to a local community but what role will the community have in this outside sharing a challenge area? How will you communicate the value for communities to participate in this platform? I would suggest having a think about the value for engineers participating in the platform versus communities participating in the platform. You could target collaborative teams to include/focus on empowering and utilising the skills at the local context over a large international collaboration for every challenge. Have a think about how the community has an active role in co-creation from start to finish in the design process. Without community involvement throughout, there could be a risk that generated solutions not being appropriate to the context. Furthermore, post-creation how will the solution be implemented? Will the communities then need to facilitate and fund this themselves? And how will implementation be empowering at the local level? Overall, an interesting idea to enable and empower engineers to build their reputation and skills in global responsibility but some thought needed around where these (inclusive) benefits exist for the local level.
Hope you find this feedback useful and good luck with the final submission.
Jonathan