Sprint 2: Spirit
Project Reframing
After a very successful kickoff, we’ve begun exploring models and frameworks concerning creative problem-solving to help researchers in assessing these skills for astronauts.
While we are still learning more about these frameworks, these were a few interesting diagrams that we found:
Both frameworks that you see above have been used in the past or currently to try to understand and break down creativity and use creativity to solve problems.
What’s interesting about Figure 3 is that it incorporates numerous existing models, not only for fostering creativity but also for addressing problem-solving. The “Java Fuzzy Evaluation Calculator” aims to develop an assessment tool that amalgamates all these models into a highly intricate framework for evaluating creativity. Similarly, another factor we looked into with creativity was time pressure, how that affects it. In the real world, we often have time pressures to get things done, even in the case of astronauts, they have to solve a problem quickly before something worse happens.
Now, here’s a question for you: Do you think short term time pressure improves creativity? Leave them in the comment and see the answer next week! Hint: It depends :/ but on what? Dun dun dunnnn.
For the analogous domains, we started looking into pilots, submarine operators, and even people in Antarctica to understand more of how stress, sleep deprivation, and other factors affect people and their mental capabilities.
Fun fact: Did you know that there was a Russian surgeon, Leonid Rogozov, who got appendicitis while on an Antarctic mission. After realizing that there was no way to have the operation outside of Antarctica and being the sole doctor of the mission, he had to operate on himself.
Situations like these are the reason why training people to develop problem solving skills is important as you’ll never know what situation will arise. Having a wide range of skill sets among the team is also important to cover all the bases you need especially when the mission cannot support more than 4 people.
ExecaPechakucha
After learning more about the problem space in general, we had the great opportunity to present our project to some executives!
This activity helped us come to terms of understanding what we are currently doing, and most importantly how to effectively tell a story to potential clients and other executives.
“How would 4 astronauts do the work of 80+ people at Mission Control Center with less resources, limited communication, no resupply, and little to no opportunity to evacuate?”
Ultimately, our goal is to ensure the safety of the crew members; however, we do hope that with the development of this system that can evaluate problem solving, it can be applied to multitudes of analogous domains: pilots, military personnels, rock climber, Antarctica explorers, submarine operators, etc.
Mission 1: Let’s Go to Houston! Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop Conference
While we did do a lot of literature review and background research, the main bulk of our learning was done at Houston! NASA has kindly invited us to attend the Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop conference (IWS) and NASA Johnson Space Center.
The trip was amazing as we got to listen to many researchers present their research in different domains including but not limited to biomedical, food science, and more. Some of the more notable topics in the conference were team formation and problem solving skills, ongoing training simulation research, and just-in-time training concept to provide immediate assistance to activities performed less frequently.
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We also got to talk with some amazing people that provided insights about their current work. This included remote medical operations, risk management, and flight control operations along with a lovely visit to NASA itself.
Being able to visit NASA itself provided loads of in-context information that helped our research into the problem space.
First Mission Complete!
After a long week at Houston, we’ve returned safely to Pittsburgh ready to work through all the information we gathered. From poster sessions talking about “Team Problem-Solving Skills for Lunar Exploration” to seeing the Soyuz housing compartment, we have plenty of hours of synthesis waiting for us back home.
Credits
Hsiao, SW., Wang, MF. & Chen, CW. Time pressure and creativity in industrial design. Int J Technol Des Educ 27, 271–289 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-015-9343-y
Article written by Team Aegis member — Margaret :D
This project is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not human subjects research.
