Week 3 - External Search and Project Planning

In week 3 we continue our discussion conceptual design and apply it to the Lego rescue design project. We also begin discussion of tools for project planning

In the model used by Mattson and Soreson, Concept Development is the second phase

  1. Opportunity development
  2. Concept development
  3. Subsystem engineering
  4. System refinement
  5. Producibility refinement
  6. Post-release refinement

The primary goal of concept development is to creating a viable conceptual design that solves the given problem.

Reading

Review Chapter 2 and read Chapter 3 in the textbook by Mattson and Sorenson. Skim ahead in Chapter 5.

  • Chapter 2 gives an overview of the design process, with a focus on Activity Maps as a tool for describing sequences of design activities by the team.
  • Chapter 3 describes the skills and attributes of successful designers
  • Chapter 5 presents a more detailed look at Concept Development

There is a lot of information in those chapters. You will need to re-read them as you work on this class and on your project in Winter and Spring terms. On this first reading, try to get the big picture, and learn where to find information about specific aspects of the design process.

Remember that the textbook by Mattson and Sorenson are heavily oriented about the "what-to-do" during each design phase. In the second half of the book they provide may tools that help with the "how-to-do" each phase. Nonetheless, Mattson and Sorenson focus more on the "what" than the "how". Other design textbooks provide more information on the "how", but those books also tend to be thick, ponderous and expensive. I can recommend other resources.

Activities for Lecture 3

  • Slides on using mobile phones to scan documents

  • Review Internal Search
    • Functional decomposition
    • Brainstorming and other idea-generating activities
    • Questions about your design activities and results so far

  • Competition rules

  • External search

  • Lottery to choose workbenches in EB 410, 430 and 480

  • Introduction to Project Planning
    • Work breakdown structure
    • Assigning and working with roles and responsibilities

Feedback on Team Contracts

  • Watch out for meaningless platitudes in the values. It's good to have high aspirations. It's even better to agree on how to put those values into concrete action. Furthermore, what mechanism(s) do you envision for resolving conflicts that arise over different attitudes toward shared values, or behaviors that don't support the shared values.

  • Meetings: It's a good idea to set a specific and regular meeting time. Scheduling an as-needed meeting consumes a lot of time and energy just trying to set up the meeting.

What plans do you have for dealing with conflict or team members not pulling their weight? This question is not meant to create conflict or distrust. However, you will have disagreements. It would be good to think about and talk about how to resolve differences and disagreements now while you are not facing a deadline or challenges on your project.

External Search Techniques

  • Catalog search
  • Store browsing: hardware stores, product displays for any related items
  • Product dissection: how does the competition solve this problem
  • Internet search: Teams rely too heavily on Google

Project Planning

We'll discuss ideas from project planning as time allows. At this point, teams are probably developing ad hoc plans


Document updated 2017-10-10.