• Question: Do you think up your own projects?

    Asked by laceyc to Amit, Emily, Joanne, Martin, Paige on 16 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Hi laceyc!

      That is why I LOVE my work in engineering communications research. Any project that I can think of and develop enough in my head to make it happen in the real world, I can do!! Engineering is also a very creative outlet, although your project ideas are usually limited a bit by time and by the equipment that your lab has. You can get around this a bit by collaborating with engineers at other labs or other universities!

    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      When I was at university it was a very open and creative atmosphere to work on whatever project you wanted really. Most lecturers were supportive on any new area of research you wanted to take part in .
      In the business world, however, it is a bit more restrictive. Any new project requires the company to spend a lot of money developing the skills, tooling, design, technology etc, and so someone has to make a decision whether it would be worth it.
      Usually the product design team are given what is called a ‘design brief’ which has all the details behind what the new product has to do. It will have information such as the maximum cost; the minimum size, what it has to do; how many buttons it can have. It is usually written to be quite loose so that the design engineers are able to be quite creative and come up with innovative or clever new ways of solving a problem.
      However if we did think up a brand new idea for a project that no-one had ever thought of, we could tell the business director who would then, hopefully, think it was a good idea too and give us the money to develop it.

    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Yes I do think up my own projects and next week I am going to start working on one of them.

      I am going to design and introduce a new database so that one part of the company can use it so they can be more efficient. 🙂 Thank you laceyc.

    • Photo: Amit Pujari

      Amit Pujari answered on 17 Mar 2012:

      Yes layec,
      There could be two things:
      (1) main project goal is decided earlier on but you can add your ideas to how the goals could be achieved differently (e.g. by coming up with new experiments, by finding new/ other benefits of the project which were not thought of before, etc.),
      (2) completely thinking up your own project from the scratch.

      Working at the University as a research engineer, is one of the best places to think up your own projects. Every single (technical gadget) thing we commonly use or come across today (including computer, microwave oven, X-ray machine, mobile phone) was somebody’s idea to start with.

      Large part of these new ideas/projects are born at the Universities, research institutions etc.
      These places are breeding grounds for the new ideas/projects/innovations……..

    • Photo: Emily Bullen

      Emily Bullen answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
      Often I am asked to work on a project, but within that project I will be deciding what needs doing. I will then tell my boss what I think I should do, and get on with it unless they have any objections.
      Sometimes I will see something that needs doing, or that would help the way we work, and I will come up with my own project.

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