Okay, so I witnessed the debauchery that is ME 263 thanks to CJ's benevolence. The class was a course in mechanical engineering, where the students formed into groups and took-on the design problem of designing a product to aid a handicapped person with a daily task.
The two groups who presented their reports when I was in the class focused on doorknobs and jars.
There's some general observations that I will list here, and I'll expand upon them in class.
1. Naming things. From the name of the group to the name of the product, names are important. Different groups handle them differently. While there is no "right" way to name something, there certainly is a "clear" and "effective" way of naming things.
2. Defining things. Some groups clearly defined the problem. Sometimes this problem definition took the form of defining the seemingly mundane, but other times the seemingly mundane turned out to have quite a few quirks not immediately noticeable.
3. Appealing to the customer. Obviously the customer has needs. How the groups negotiated the customer's needs into their design, either by introducing the definition of something or using customer input to determine price all tells us about the group and how well informed they are.
4. Sketch. Presentation of sketches, explanations of how sketches were used as an aid to the design process, and WHERE sketches were used in the process cycle, are all things I feel showed some interesting results about the groups.
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Okay, so I witnessed the debauchery that is ME 263 thanks to CJ's benevolence. The class was a course in mechanical engineering, where the students formed into groups and took-on the design problem of designing a product to aid a handicapped person with a daily task.
The two groups who presented their reports when I was in the class focused on doorknobs and jars.
There's some general observations that I will list here, and I'll expand upon them in class.
1. Naming things. From the name of the group to the name of the product, names are important. Different groups handle them differently. While there is no "right" way to name something, there certainly is a "clear" and "effective" way of naming things.
2. Defining things. Some groups clearly defined the problem. Sometimes this problem definition took the form of defining the seemingly mundane, but other times the seemingly mundane turned out to have quite a few quirks not immediately noticeable.
3. Appealing to the customer. Obviously the customer has needs. How the groups negotiated the customer's needs into their design, either by introducing the definition of something or using customer input to determine price all tells us about the group and how well informed they are.
4. Sketch. Presentation of sketches, explanations of how sketches were used as an aid to the design process, and WHERE sketches were used in the process cycle, are all things I feel showed some interesting results about the groups.
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