Engineering Portfolio

Luyu - ESC102 - Praxis II - Last Updated 10/04/26

Hi, I'm Luyu. A UofT Engineering Science student. This portfolio serves to communicate my engineering process for some of the coursework I've been involved with in my freshman year. It draws upon my experiences, and seeks to describe them in the context of Praxis.

To navigate this site, you may use the header at the top or the buttons below. The sections are organized as such:

Home is this page. It includes a reflection on how I identify myself, how this was affected by my past experiences, and how this affects how I engage in engineering design.

Project 1 is a reflection on my Praxis II team Showcase. I investigate my team's diverging process, comparing biomimicry and the morph chart, then review our converging effectiveness using evaluation criteria.

Project 2 is a reflection on my CIV102 Bridge design project. Here I investigate my team's use of simulations to converge, as well as effectiveness of representing.

Project 3 is a reflection on my Praxis I project. I review my team's framing methodology using the NGO framework, our usage of Toulmin's argument structure, as well as reflection on our connection with Perry's model.

I hope you enjoy your journey through my portfolio!

Position Statement

About Me

Engineering has been a field that's been where I thought I'd find myself in for the majority of my life. From back when I was younger playing with legos, to when I was coding projects on GitHub, to more recently, creating experimental setups for science experiments. All of these experiences contributed to my feelings toward engineering, leading me to join Engineering Science at UofT.

Back in January, I wrote my first position statement regarding how I viewed engineering, design, and engineering design in the context of my past experience. A video of it can be found here.

As a quick summary, I find interest in how we can connect abstract concepts to create interesting solutions. Having a background in designing physics experiments, I enjoy doing napkin math calculations as a way to explore the solution space. This is a large part of why I chose Engineering Science, as the name literally embodies what I want to pursue in engineering.

This has also connected to how I take on problems, and the opportunities that I engage in. For instance, I've been doing research in an experimental quantum optics laboratory throughout the year and will be doing it this summer. I've also continued designing fun experiments with friends, and definitely over-engineered my physics pendulum experiment.
You'll hear more about how I approach problems on the other pages.

What's Changed?

In the past few months, my experience in formal engineering has effectively doubled (having now completed my second semester). This brings with it changes to how I view myself in the context of engineering and design. Before we discuss that however, I shall clarify my biases.

Biases

It is important to consider the biases I have when discussing my own position. I have identified the following as my most influential biases:

Personal Values: As a young human, I hold many values which affect how I view the outside world. For instance, I find environmentalism important, which may affect how I see certain industries. This is unlikely to affect how I represent myself in this portfolio, but may be visible in how I frame issues.

Grading: It is important to recognize that this writing is (and the projects described were) submitted and graded. This may affect the portrayal, possibly aligning more with the relevant grading metrics.

AI/Work Ethic: I hold values around how work is done. For instance, I dislike using AI myself, as well as if my teammates use it. That is why this site is entirely hand-coded. This may affect how I engage in problems, where I could avoid solutions related to AI.

Of course, my biases are not necessarily limited to just these, but they are the ones that you are most likely to come across when reading my position.

Perry's Model of Intellectual Development

Perry's model can help me map myself into an axis of development. Having just finished Praxis II, I can reflect on my intellectual progression. In my view, I have moved from dualism, prior to coming to EngSci, to multiplism around January, and now into relativism.

Before January, prior to coming to EngSci, I consider myself to have had a quite dualistic view of engineering. There was very little to consider outside of whether a solution worked or didn't.

Back then, I figured I was starting to move into multiplism; a stage where uncertainty is dominant. As I outlined in my statement, I was often unsure of whether a solution could be considered any better than another due to the complexity of stakeholders.

Figure 1: Slide 12 of my initial position statement. This reviews where I felt I fell in intellectual development in January.

Now having finished Praxis II, I feel I have moved into relativism. Relativism is defined by being able to consider a wide number of factors in making decisions, such as various types of contextual evidence.
Evidence-based reasoning formed a large core of how we operated as a team for Showcase. Despite having an enormous amount of ideas, we were able to use mental frameworks to help us quickly iterate at a speed far faster than in the first semester. While I don't believe I have become fully committed to relativism, which is the final stage in Perry's model, I do more often nudge and remind myself of relativism.

For instance, when converging between a design that required electricity and one without following our Beta release, we returned to framing. We investigated further regarding our stakeholder's situation to allow us to make a more evidence-based decision. More detail regarding our FDCR processes for Showcase can be found under the Project 1 tab.

For the sake of organization and avoiding this section becoming too long-winded, under each project tab I include a reflection of its impact on my position.

You may be seeing this cat a lot \(^-^)/