Supplemental Notes
This page provides links to supplemental notes for in-class lecture. The notes are listed here so that it will be easier to find by topic, than by digging through lectures sequentially.. Click on the note heading or the "Continue ..." link to get the full content of the note.
- A Decision-making Primer
- Decision-making in Concept Selection
- Creative Tension and Design Fixation
- Thoughts on Critique
- Guide to Writing Reports for Capstone
- Meeting Toolbox
- Project Planning
- Rubric for Weekly Team Meetings
A Decision-making Primer
Short version: We should strive to be rational and include a reasonably wide range of ideas when we make design decisions. However, we are not fully rational, and therefore we are likely to exclude ideas simply because of our habits, bias, disinterest or fear of making a mistake.
Decision-making in Concept Selection
This page provides an overview of tools to help in concept selection, and decision-making, in general. Refer to basic notes on decision-making for an overview of decision-making and unconscious bias.
Creative Tension and Design Fixation
This web page addresses the role of creative tension in the design process. The primary focus is on design fixation – the tendency to prematurely adopt suboptimal solutions. We start with a discussion of creative tension, which can be a source of creativity, or a subconscious motivation for limiting the search for creative solutions.
Thoughts on Critique
See Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry, Discussing Design: Improving Communication & Collaboration through Critique, The book is at O'Reilly or at Amazon. The Discussing Design web site does not appear to be updated since Jan 2015.
For a good quick overview of design critique, have a look at the post by Cassie McDaniel, Design Criticism and the Creative Process. A List Apart is a web site about web design. The design process for web sites has overlap with Mechanical Engineering design in the areas of identifying customer requirements, the idea generation process and the importance of high-functioning, interdisciplinary teams.
Guide to Writing Reports for Capstone
Due to their large scope and duration, Capstone projects have specialized documentation requirements. This web page provides guidance on how to document your Capstone project.
Meeting Toolbox
This web page describes ideas to help Capstone teams have more productive meetings. There are no magic formulas or agenda templates that, by themselves, are guaranteed to make meetings better. Effective meetings require a lot of ingredients, including the committed engagement of all participants.
Project Planning
Refer to the ME 491 web page on project planning.
A good, and fairly concise reference on project planning is, Fundamentals of Project Management, 5th ed. Joseph Heagney, 2016, American Management Association. ISBN 978-0-8144+3738-0
A free alternative is the open textbook by Merrie Barron and Andrew Barron, Project Management. OpenStax CNX. https://cnx.org/contents/5e9177d7-9998-43d0-9b98-91a369c6a371@10.1
Rubric for Weekly Team Meetings
Teams have weekly meetings with a faculty coach. The team comes prepared with an agenda and a printed copy of the rubric worksheet. Faculty coaches use the worksheet to provide scores on four categories:
- Meeting Productivity
- Professional Behavior
- Results for the Week
- Progress Toward Project Goals