Chapter 8 "Effects of COVID-19 on our project"

Hi guys

Here we are at our phase 3 stage of this amazing project. This is the prototype and testing phase. It sounds exciting right? Yeah ...We are very grateful to almighty God for keeping us alive and giving us the opportunity to work despite COVID-19. All we need this time is to put into practice the pieces of advice from our health personnel and remember to pray because nothing is impossible for our creator. This is not a normal time. However, thank God technology has made it possible for us to continue working and learning from home. We want to keep you updated because we know you are so eager to see out innovative ideas into realization. Thank you and enjoy the updates...

Kindly stop checking the number of deaths from COVID-19 today and come explore this beautiful journey with us (through reading of course, it is good for the soul emoji)

On campus we were used to physical meetings to work on this project but now COVID-19 has sent everyone home and we are forced to shift to the virtual work-space. However, we are not quitters, we have started something, and we have to finish it no matter what; more importantly finish it well. Despite the distance among all six group members, we are making good use of social media and other technologies to communicate among ourselves effectively. Some of the challenges of COVID-19 on our project is to have adequate resources to build our final product which is the improved version of the already existing low-cost pedal operated groundnut sheller. Also communication with our community partner can not longer be done physically. We are working with people from the rural communities and they are not used to the virtual work-place. As a team, we plan to send them more videos and pictures of our prototypes so that they understand our design better and give us any suggestions because they will be using the product at the end of the day.

Furthermore, we deliberate on ideas related to our project together via Zoom meetings and on our WhatsApp groups. We had back and forth brainstorming and analysis of ideas and together we settled on having three major subsystems of our product. We needed to iterate some of our ideas in phases 2 as far as the subsystems were concerned. Finally, we settled on three main subsystems. These subsystems are the pedal driving part of a bicycle which is our power source, the shelling subsystem and the separation subsystem. Then, after that we share the work among ourselves to make sure everyone contributes. We have 3 prototypes to make because we had 3 subsystems. Each group member was given the opportunity to join a subsystem group and at the end we had a pair working on each subsystem.

Denver and Joana did a great work with the prototype design of the power subsystem. They used a whole cardboard to design the prototype which showed the bicycle pedal driving the shelling subsystem. Their prototype showed clearly their creativity because they minimized the waste of resources by drawing first their subsystem and then cut off the unwanted parts from the complete cardboard. You could visualize the final product without explanations from the team. Nevertheless, Denver made a video explaining how each part works for the sake of people who needs more clarifications.

Faith and Charlotte worked on the separating subsystem and their prototype was just amazing. It clearly gave an insight about how the cracked groundnut pods will be separated from the kernels using sieves. As a team we realized that sieves had the purpose of separating impurities from the product. They designed the sieves which has the general diameter of a nut taking into consideration errors that may occur in measurement, biological and environmental conditions beyond our control. There are two layers of sieve in the cylindrical extrusion from beneath the system. Using critical thinking, these two women change makers incorporated the concept of inbuilt brushes that are controlled by actuators to regularly clean or brush out shells to avoid clogging of holes because the sieves would have to be cleaned. In a video Faith explained further to our user how the separating subsystem works.

Mary and LIoyd worked on the shelling subsystem which is very important for us in this project. When shelling is not done properly, the user will find no need to use our product because one of them informed us that they had many means of shelling. However, many of these means crack a higher percentage of the nuts for them. Together, they found a way of making a spike tooth cylinder device from cardboard and tape. Their prototype showed the four main parts which are the cylinder, the tooth, the handles, and the base. In the video Mary shared to the entire team demonstrating how the shelling subsystem works, anyone who has never seen a groundnut sheller could understand how the shelling is done with the machine.

A Picture of our schedule after COVID-19

All team members contributed towards the building and testing of the prototype whether physically or intellectually because 3 team members physically built the prototype of the 3 subsystems. The remaining 3 team supported their colleagues they were assigned to in this process via virtual means.

How will you describe this team in three words? …..

I will say we are united, creative (especially in times of improvising) and goal oriented.

PEACE OUT