Louis Noel
Welcome to Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.
Hi. I am Louis Noel, Longitude fellow and graduate of Rice University in Mechanical Engineering. For this episode, I spoke with Helen Little.

Helen is a mechanical engineer at Axiom Space, but she is also a talented artist and engineer in many other disciplines. We delve into Helen’s unique perspective on how her artistic background enriches her diverse engineering endeavors and vice versa. Join us as we uncover the symbiosis between art and engineering in her life, and how this fusion not only drives her professional journey, but also shapes her approach to problem solving and innovation.

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Louis
You earned your Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Rice University but before that you attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston. From our past work together, I know you’re a talented sketch artist, creative writer, and avid reader, could you share what influenced you to pursue engineering at university instead of a degree in the arts?

Helen Little
Well, first of all, thank you for describing me so generously. That was definitely an interesting choice for me. So when I was in high school, I got to do three hours of visual art every day, as part of my schoolwork. And then the rest of the day was dedicated to high level academic classes that were available to me. And by the end of the four years, I was realizing like, I had already gotten the opportunity to really like, put time and energy into art, and not so much into the academic subjects I was interested in, which were mainly science and math. The other thing that I realized is that, even though I really like math, and science, and art, realistically, I felt like it was easier for art to be a hobby, rather than the science and math to be a hobby. And it’s easier for art to be the hobby without a degree. If I really wanted to get into like math and science and engineering, I would need a degree for that. So, I think that that held true. And then the last reason which I didn’t realize at the time when I made this decision, but more so, you know, looking back in hindsight, is that I think the reality is, in our capitalist society, the nine to five work schedule, I feel like it works way better, or doing engineering work. Like it’s easier for me to turn on that analytical side of my brain and a nine to five format, versus doing that with art, where there’s a lot of waves of creativity and motivation that are more difficult to kind of push into that. And I think that has to do more with just like how our society and work life is set up where it’s just, it’s just easier to do it, via engineering versus than art. So that was also a benefit.

Louis
That was a really good breakdown. I can only imagine that, you know, it’s easier to explain it in two minutes than it was to actually go through it. There are a lot of interesting insights that we will get into some of that, so really teed it up well. Your projects at Rice and your subsequent professional roles, suggests that you have significant aptitude in various fields of engineering, notably mechanical and software engineering. For instance, you designed and prototyped a zipline for feeding lions at the Houston Zoo, worked at Epic, the largest medical record software company, innovated in 3D printing with recycled plastic at re:3D, and are now contributing to the design of the world’s first commercial space station at Axiom Space. How did you discover your passion for these diverse engineering disciplines? And how have you cultivated your expertise within them?

Helen
Well, when you list them all out like that, it does seem very diverse. That was not intentional on my part. I did not plan that at all. And the way I kind of approach working in different things or changing jobs, I actually don’t plan that far ahead. I know there’s a lot of people who like to have very linear career paths, and think, Okay, I’m gonna get this degree and do this graduate school and then go to this role than that, that will go to this role. I haven’t been doing that. Instead, what I’ve been doing is just pursuing things and topics that interests me, for the sake of that they’re fun, and trying to not think too hard about how they will actually manifest in a quote unquote, practical or useful way in my life, whether that means like, a career or whatever. Because I feel like I can’t predict that ahead of time and so in the short term in the present, if I’m interested in, you know, urban design, I’ll go watch some YouTube videos about that. And maybe some people will think that’s a waste of time, because I’m not an urban designer, but who knows. What if something I do in the future, this interests that I kind of fed, somehow comes back around and actually helps me out. And I find it it’s so difficult to predict that and sometimes those opportunities only come after dabbling a little bit in whatever space that’s interesting. So it’s like might as well just dabble into whatever is interesting to you today and figured out like the rest later. I’m sure there’s cons to doing things that way. It’s worked out for me so far. But it does involve like picking up new things quickly. That is one con to it versus like just building on something that feels safe and that you know. And for me, I think I’ve just accepted the fact that I will always have to start from zero in terms of learning new things, and just accept that I’m just going to be like, unknowledgeable about topics at the beginning and there’s always going to be a bit of a learning curve. And I think having that humility to admit that I don’t know things is what actually helps me learn things faster, because that means that I’m not afraid to ask the stupid questions and reveal my lack of knowledge in order to fill that lack of knowledge. That’s the only way to really learn.

Louis
I feel like you have a lot of curiosity, I know. And we talked about intrinsic motivation in a past episode. And I feel like you were really leveraging that and as a creative, you can have these ways of dabbling, and then go back, if it ever comes up in a future conversation and kind of lean on those things that you may not have previously had exposure to. But wow, you had so many good takeaways out of there, like especially talking about just trying new things and having the humility to ask questions. That’s really the fastest way to learn.

Helen
I almost feel like I had a false perception in college that, like life was going to be very linear and planned out. But I suspect that a lot of people think that and that’s not the reality, for most people, I think, most people’s lives take unexpected turns. And that’s more the norm than otherwise.

Louis
Yeah, which fundamentally leads to some of that anxiety. We’re kind of teed up as this career path and then you get to figuring out, oh, it’s not all like that and there’s more flexibility in career and you know, what you’re interested in.

Louis
Designing, prototyping and testing appear to be hard coded into your skill set. You won first place at an innovative designathon, created an interactive exhibit at the Houston Weather Museum, and imparted your knowledge to hundreds of Rice students at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, where you started as a junior lab assistant and eventually became the head lab assistant. Could you explain the design prototype test process for our lay audience? And how does it engage you as both an engineer and creative thinker?

Helen
All right, great question. Um, so I take this as the engineering design process, but you can have different versions of it applied to solving problems that are not necessarily engineering. And for me, the steps are actually broken out even further. So, you got to define the problem, research the problem, brainstorm, choose your solutions, prototype, and then test. I guess I kind of like expanded the design section of that and that’s an iterative process. There is sort of like a linear step by step, but at any point in that, you may have to double back and go back to a previous step based on what you learn at any one step in the process. And it’s just a way to sort of break down how to solve a complicated problem efficiently. So, when solving any kind of problem, there is a process through it. So, the first step is to define what is the problem you’re trying to solve. That’s the first step because if you don’t know what problem you’re solving, you may design something for a completely different problem and not actually make a solution that works for whatever is at hand. Then after that is research. So, gathering a bunch of background information, seeing what has been done already, just start to kind of like, give some information to start working off of. And then brainstorming is very important in that it allows you to let your mind wander and really be creative and coming up with potential solutions. And the really key part of the brainstorming step is to not jump ahead to judgment of any solutions, because that is what will kill the ability to be generative with ideas. The idea is just to come up with a ton of wild ideas as much as you can. And then from that you call the solutions and you pick which ones are actually good or seem decent. And then prototyping is actually trying to implement it in a way that is low cost, proof of concept as quick as possible without having to build the final thing, just to test out some basic principles of it. And then that’s when you test a prototype and then what you learn from that, you know, you can always double back. Like maybe you make a prototype and then you realize, you know, whoever your customers or clients, whoever gave you the problem, maybe find something else about the problem that you didn’t realize you didn’t properly define. Now you have to go all the way back to the defining the problem. And then maybe you have to redo some brainstorming now that you’ve redefined the problem. Or, you know, maybe you test a prototype, and you realize there’s some issues with the prototype. So, then you go back to the brainstorming phase, what solutions can we come up with to improve this prototype. It is like, generally step by step but there’s loops within that as you gain more information and it’s iterative. So, you’re kind of building yourself closer and closer to your final solution. There’s this concept known as spiral development, where you kind of just build different things. And every time you re try to build something, you learn from the previous one, and you just get closer and closer to your final solution. Because nothing is ever built perfectly the first time, I think that’s really what it gets at.

Louis
That was a perfect explanation. I feel like that was, you know, anyone could understand that. And you, like you said very early on in the answer it is a process for solving more than just engineering problems, which I’m curious to hear about in this next question. In what ways do you lean on your creative mindset to deliver engineering solutions? And has there ever been a time when your engineering mindset helped you solve an artistic problem?

Helen
Okay, I’m gonna flip this question on you, and actually answer the opposite, where the artistic mindset helped me with the engineering problem.

Louis
Okay.

Helen
Because I started with art in high school and the process for creating an art project actually had a ton of overlap with the engineering design process I learned in college. Usually, when you’re making an art project, you kind of start with, Okay, what’s the general thing I’m trying to make? In school, initially, the teachers would define that. They would say, hey, I want you to make a piece of art that uses these materials, or this size, or it’s supposed to convey this concept, or you’re supposed to use this technique. So, they define certain aspects of it. And then you’re supposed to come up with the rest. So, before you even make the piece of art, I would take my journal and write down ideas or thoughts I have about it, to explore. And then we would draw what’s called thumbnails. So, it’s just like a quick sketch of whatever the thing is, so you can kind of get a general idea. And I would, thumbnail different ideas, write out different lists, and then from there, kind of select out, okay, I’m liking this direction, or let me combine these two ideas for oh, this is interesting, but not quite it, let me branch off and try to do something related. And then once I settle on that, that’s when you like, start to actually execute, and you make the artwork. And then, you know, anyone who’s like a full-time artist, or usually it’s not about the fact that they just made one piece of work, it’s that they have a body of artwork. So, they have made a piece of art, learned something from that, and then made another one that, you know, maybe it’s similar in some ways, but explores different aspects. And you will have whole collections of artists doing like a certain style of work. And if an artist like lives long enough, and does art long enough, they’ll have periods, like how Picasso had his blue period, right. So, it’s really the same in engineering, when you just follow the same engineering design process, with like defining the problem, brainstorming, executing on it, learning from it, and then basically doing it all over again.

And the other aspect from art that really helped me in engineering was learning how to critique. So in art, what we would do is, everyone would be given an art project. And then when the project is due, we hang up all the art and we all sit around and go through each piece and talk about each piece in terms of like, what we’re interpreting from it, ideas for how it could be better, or what we liked about it, what we didn’t like about it. And it’s not just feedback for the artists themselves, it’s also an exercise for the people giving the feedback to understand how to actually analyze something, to improve it. And that in itself is a skill and takes humility too because, you know, when people create art, a lot of times they’re very emotionally attached to what they create. And that can make it difficult to be a little bit more objective to see like its flaws, but you kind of have to do that in order to improve on it. And it’s also really valuable to accept that critique from outside perspectives too, which can also be even, you know, more anxiety inducing and harrowing for people. I see the same thing happen for engineering because a lot of engineers really care about the work they produce, and they can feel very self-conscious about having it be critiqued by someone else and point out the design flaws. But you just got to remember, at the end of the day, you want that work to be the best it can be. And inherently, it kind of does involve being able to look at it and fix the things that are wrong with it and to get help from other people to get that outside perspective. Yeah, I mean, it happens a lot, everybody has a blind spot, or like, you know, maybe they get 90% of the way there, but that last 10%, they can’t see it, and you just have one other person walk in, and they immediately see the issue. And you’re like, yes, thank you.

Louis
Wow, I never really thought to consider that but you’re right, there are really similar ties, especially when you brought in the concept of critiquing, or giving feedback. I feel like we don’t really do that much in engineering in our formal education, aside from maybe when we get put on a group project, then we have to, you know, duel against someone else against a known idea, but sounds like as an artist, you had a little bit of a head start on some of us. So that’s great,

Helen
I can give a more explicit example, actually, from work. So, you know, I’m currently work in aerospace and NASA has what’s called the NASA product development process. And the idea is you know what your end product is, which could be a space station module. And there are all these things that need to be designed at different stages of maturity in order to reach that. So, they’ve broken it down into different stages. So, there’s like SRR, which is you define your requirements. SDR, which is like the system definition. And then you have PDR, which is like your preliminary design. And then CDR is Critical Design Review. And so, there’s like all these reviews at different points in the maturity of a product. And the point is that, at any one of these reviews, the people working on the project create a data packet, and they present it to everybody. And so, you have all the other stakeholders, you have like subject matter experts, senior technical advisors sit in and basically critique the design at that stage. And that’s to, essentially, catch any situations where maybe like, there’s a requirement that’s misunderstood, or is incorrect, or there’s something missing. And so you catch it at every stage so that you don’t get too far along in the process going in the wrong direction, essentially.

Louis
That’s a perfect example. I can imagine like, you need to have some sort of structure to doing this. I mean, can’t just rely on tribal knowledge passed down. Yeah, it seems like having some structure to the process really enables you to de-risk a solution.

Helen
Exactly.

Louis
So some might think fields like science, technology, engineering, and math lack creativity due to the black and white nature of their governing laws. However, creativity often drives breakthrough innovations in these areas. What are modern methods for integrating creativity into engineering? And could you share an example?

Helen
Yeah, I really hate that take that they are separate. And I really don’t see them as being totally different disciplines, there’s so much overlap. I mean, the whole discussion is kind of pointing that out. But when it comes to STEM fields, I think the really exciting part of those fields is building something new. So innovating, like furthering technology, building upon what currently is into the unknown. And so, by definition, it isn’t black and white. Right? Like you are working with uncertainty and that’s where being creative, being innovative is key. I think I heard somewhere that a lot of innovation happens from connections being made between different fields. Which kind of makes sense, because, you know, if something is truly innovative, it’s probably because people overlooked it.

Louis
Good point.

Helen
Unexpected. So, like the best places to look for innovative ideas are where people aren’t looking for them. The big example for that at my current role is, I’ve been learning a lot about space architecture. So, this is this integrated concept of how do you actually design, for example, like a space module or a space station. And the history of this is that initially, these designs were very much driven by engineering and engineering principles, because there were major engineering hurdles to be met for people to live in a zero-gravity low earth orbit, Space Station. And so, that was where most of the focus was put on but over time, people realized it’s not just about the engineering and using engineering problem solving methods don’t solve for everything, such as things like human factors or architecture or like the psychological effects of working in this type of environment. And that’s where like people outside of engineering disciplines kind of come in, you know, people with backgrounds in industrial design or aesthetics or like UI UX and things like that. And I think it’s tempting for engineers to be kind of snobby about it and like, who cares about things looking pretty, we need to keep you alive. But then you have to, you kind of have to ask yourself, you know, it’s not just about surviving, it’s about thriving, right? Like what is the purpose of creating new technology or engineering. Like at the end of the day, these things will impact people, so you have to remember the people aspect of it and like we don’t live in a vacuum.

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Louis
We hope you enjoyed our episode. I particularly enjoyed how Helen highlighted the value and importance of critiquing and engineering, similar to art. Whether you’re an aspiring engineer, an artist, or anyone in between, Helen’s story is a compelling reminder that the paths to fulfillment and success are as diverse as the individuals who tread them.

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