Project work is an essential component of the learning experience in a course on product design and development. We have experimented with many types of projects. This section presents ideas on setting up and managing student project activities.
General Project Guidelines
We like to have the students produce a physical prototype of their products by the end of the course. As a result, we insist that the products be simple. Following are the guidelines we give to the students:
|
Some Product Examples
YES
|
NO
|
|
|
Generating Project Ideas
We have used three types of projects: student-conceived projects, industry-sponsored projects, and faculty-specified projects.
Student-Conceived Projects
In our experience students can easily generate a set of interesting ideas for design and development projects. We ask each student to prepare a one-page written proposal and a 60-second oral presentation. In the first or second week of the course, the students hand in their proposals and make their oral presentations. We like to distribute copies of the proposals to all of the members of the class. Depending on the size of the class, one of the following approaches may be most appropriate for distributing the proposals: 1. each student brings enough copies for all the other members of the class (difficult for groups of more than 30), 2. a teaching assistant or secretary makes copies for everyone while the students are listening to the oral presentations (requires excellent coordination and a high-speed copier), 3. the students turn in their proposals several hours before class and copies are made for everyone (best for large classes), 4. the proposals are submitted and posted to the class web site for everyone to review. After listening to the presentations, the students fill out a "project preference card." This card requests project and team member preferences as well as information on the skills and background of the student. We then form teams based on both the project and team-member preferences expressed by the students. We tell the students that if they wish to work with specific classmates, then they should all express identical preferences on their project preference cards. Assuming the group is relatively well balanced in terms of skills, we generally allow such teaming. We have also allowed students to form their own teams in an unstructured or semi-structured fashion. One year we asked the students to simply "form teams of four students" after they had listened to all the project proposals. Another time we had the students first vote to select the eight best projects, then asked them to form teams around those eight projects (in this case, there were about 32 students in the course). Of the approaches we have tried, the project preference cards and subsequent team formation by the faculty seems to work best, but we would not be surprised if a better approach emerges in the future. By having all students present ideas and then allowing the class to express preferences, the group effectively generates a large set of ideas and from this set selects those that are most promising. A potential pitfall of this approach is that students may express strong preferences for projects which are more complex than can be accommodated in the course. To address this concern, we generally warn the students against expressing preferences for projects that they believe are too complex. In forming project teams, we sometimes reject projects that clearly violate the guidelines we set out. Industry-Sponsored Projects We have also used a variety of industry-sponsored projects. In most cases, we have combined the industry projects with the student-conceived projects. This is relatively easy to do by having a representative from the sponsoring company prepare a one-page proposal and make a 60-second presentation just like the students in the class do. Then, those students interested in working on the industry project simply express this preference on their project preference card. Another avenue for generating industry-sponsored projects is to encourage the students to establish their own relationships with industrial partners. We have had several students involve local companies in their oral presentations. In one case, the students simply walked into an Orvis retailer (fly fishing equipment) and asked the management what products they needed. In several cases, including the case of the Orvis project, students subsequently licensed their product designs to the partner companies. A third approach is for the faculty to arrange company sponsorship in advance. This can be a lot of work for the faculty, but may be a good approach to establishing relationships with local companies when these relationships would have value to the school or faculty beyond the duration of the course. We have not generally requested a lot of financial support from the sponsoring companies. We either ask them to pay for any prototyping expenses or pay a fee ($5000) to be a course sponsor. We have used a simple, written contract stating very clearly that the students own their work, but the sponsor may purchase the project work (the product design details) from the students for a pre-negotiated fee ($500) per student. Faculty-Specified Projects A third source of project ideas is the course faculty. We have on several occasions proposed project ideas to the class. These ideas are sometimes suggestions from colleagues or other people affiliated with the school and in other cases are simply ideas we have wanted to pursue. On average our ideas seem to be no better than the ones students generate on their own, so we view faculty suggestions as a possible addition to, but not replacement of, the student ideas. Some of our colleagues favor having all of the students work on the same project idea. This approach has some interesting characteristics, including the ability to directly compare the work of the teams and the ability to share in some of the information gathering activities of the early phases of development. At Stanford, teams working on the same project idea compete in a market simulation. |
Team Formation, Budgets, and Other Logistics
Teams seem to work best when they contain from three to five students, although we often have up to nine students on teams in larger classes. Ideally the teams would all include management students, engineering students (including some with a manufacturing focus), and industrial design students, although we have successfully completed projects with students from a single discipline. We also try to ensure that each team has members with access to a car and to some kind of shop facility.
We occasionally have many students expressing preferences for the same project idea. In this case, we have generally formed more than one team around the same basic project idea. This has worked fine. Although, we observe that when more than one team works on the same project idea, the competition may become intense and the students may in fact work too hard.
Generally we provide the student teams with a small budget to pay for project materials. The budget amount has varied from $500 to $1000 per team. On average, each team has spent about two-thirds of their budget. A budget seems to add some realism to the project experience and allows the students to contract for some support services such as welding or SLA, for example. If each member of a team of four students contributed $100 to their efforts, the team would have $400 for project expenses, which is probably plenty. Many courses require $100-200 for books, so this approach does not seem unreasonable. We have found that teaching assistants (TAs) are sometimes hard to utilize effectively in project courses, so another option would be to allocate the TA budget to project expenses.
We occasionally have many students expressing preferences for the same project idea. In this case, we have generally formed more than one team around the same basic project idea. This has worked fine. Although, we observe that when more than one team works on the same project idea, the competition may become intense and the students may in fact work too hard.
Generally we provide the student teams with a small budget to pay for project materials. The budget amount has varied from $500 to $1000 per team. On average, each team has spent about two-thirds of their budget. A budget seems to add some realism to the project experience and allows the students to contract for some support services such as welding or SLA, for example. If each member of a team of four students contributed $100 to their efforts, the team would have $400 for project expenses, which is probably plenty. Many courses require $100-200 for books, so this approach does not seem unreasonable. We have found that teaching assistants (TAs) are sometimes hard to utilize effectively in project courses, so another option would be to allocate the TA budget to project expenses.
Prototypes
We require students to create a physical prototype of their products. Ideally this prototype would be both a "looks like" and a "works like" prototype. In many cases, especially when the students adhere to the project guidelines, this is possible. In some cases, the students are not able to create a "production-intent" (or alpha) prototype. This is often because the product involves complex surfaces that would be very expensive to prototype in a form closely approximating the production version of the parts. In this and similar cases, the team may choose to create two separate prototypes, one exhibiting the appearance (for example) of the product, and the other demonstrating its functionality.
We know of several successful courses that do not require the students to create working prototypes of the product. There are some settings, especially in a course predominantly populated by students without design experience, where a complete prototype is infeasible. Even so, we recommend that the instructor require some kind of physical prototype, even if it is made of cardboard or foam, in order to impose some measure of physical realism on the project experience.
For several years, we asked the students to turn in their actual prototype hardware, which we then kept for future display. This lead to the "museum phenomenon": most of the open horizontal space in our offices and the nearby closets became filled with project hardware. Now we ask the students to turn in high-quality digital photos of their prototype products in use. The photographs are a good way to archive the projects and are convenient for use in presentations describing the projects.
We know of several successful courses that do not require the students to create working prototypes of the product. There are some settings, especially in a course predominantly populated by students without design experience, where a complete prototype is infeasible. Even so, we recommend that the instructor require some kind of physical prototype, even if it is made of cardboard or foam, in order to impose some measure of physical realism on the project experience.
For several years, we asked the students to turn in their actual prototype hardware, which we then kept for future display. This lead to the "museum phenomenon": most of the open horizontal space in our offices and the nearby closets became filled with project hardware. Now we ask the students to turn in high-quality digital photos of their prototype products in use. The photographs are a good way to archive the projects and are convenient for use in presentations describing the projects.
Final Presentations
We have always required final project presentations by the students. The primary benefits of a final presentation are that it forces the students to construct a coherent story about their product, it forces some reflection on the process and outcome, and it helps to share the project experience with the rest of the students in the class. The primary difficulty in requiring presentations is that they consume a lot of class time. We have tried two approaches: presentations during regular class hours and presentations during a specially scheduled session.
When scheduling presentations during regular class hours, we have generally used the final three sessions of the course. We ask the students to prepare a 15-minute presentation using whatever media they would like and to demonstrate their prototype hardware. Allowing for 5 to 8 minutes of discussion and 2 to 5 minutes for transitions between groups, each presentation requires 25 minutes of class time. With eight projects, the presentations can be completed in three class sessions with one "slot" remaining for filling out course evaluations and a general debriefing.
We have also tried scheduling a special session for presentations. Generally we hold this session all day on a Saturday. We do not hold class during the week or so preceding the presentation day so that the students do not feel that we are adding extra class time. An all-day session allows us to set up the equipment and arrange for outside panelists only once. Doing the presentations on one day also creates a somewhat festive finale to the course.
Our colleagues at Harvard have held a "design fair" in lieu of presentations. At the design fair, each team sets up a booth with a display of their prototype and project work. The class and visitors can then circulate around the fair and observe the work of the class. This approach is partly dictated by the fact that the Harvard class has approximately 150 students in it and individual presentations are not feasible.
We invite local design professionals, venture capitalists, and faculty colleagues to the presentations both to add an element of realism to the setting and to publicize the activities of the university. We have also succeeded in attracting media coverage (newspaper, magazine, television) when we have made some effort to do so.
When scheduling presentations during regular class hours, we have generally used the final three sessions of the course. We ask the students to prepare a 15-minute presentation using whatever media they would like and to demonstrate their prototype hardware. Allowing for 5 to 8 minutes of discussion and 2 to 5 minutes for transitions between groups, each presentation requires 25 minutes of class time. With eight projects, the presentations can be completed in three class sessions with one "slot" remaining for filling out course evaluations and a general debriefing.
We have also tried scheduling a special session for presentations. Generally we hold this session all day on a Saturday. We do not hold class during the week or so preceding the presentation day so that the students do not feel that we are adding extra class time. An all-day session allows us to set up the equipment and arrange for outside panelists only once. Doing the presentations on one day also creates a somewhat festive finale to the course.
Our colleagues at Harvard have held a "design fair" in lieu of presentations. At the design fair, each team sets up a booth with a display of their prototype and project work. The class and visitors can then circulate around the fair and observe the work of the class. This approach is partly dictated by the fact that the Harvard class has approximately 150 students in it and individual presentations are not feasible.
We invite local design professionals, venture capitalists, and faculty colleagues to the presentations both to add an element of realism to the setting and to publicize the activities of the university. We have also succeeded in attracting media coverage (newspaper, magazine, television) when we have made some effort to do so.
Project Assignments
At MIT, this course meets twice per week (usually Tuesdays and Thursdays). We try very hard to schedule the assignments such that they are due on a Tuesday and are returned to the students at the end of the next class session (Thursday). We believe that this rapid feedback is extremely important. Without fast turnaround the instructor’s comments are nearly worthless in influencing the direction of the projects, because by the time a week has passed the students have already moved on to the next assignment.
We also like to photocopy the best assignment handed in each week and distribute a copy to each team. This creates a bit of competition and allows the entire class to share their experiences. We grade the weekly assignments on a scale of 0 to 10. We don’t give grades of 0 through 4 (part of the psychology of grading). A 7.5 is defined as "meeting our expectations for the assignment." A 10 corresponds to an excellent job by a professional team. We give few 10s, and seem to give an average grade of about 8.5. In our experience, grading the course as a whole is quite difficult. The problem is that teamwork reduces the variance in grades.
We also like to photocopy the best assignment handed in each week and distribute a copy to each team. This creates a bit of competition and allows the entire class to share their experiences. We grade the weekly assignments on a scale of 0 to 10. We don’t give grades of 0 through 4 (part of the psychology of grading). A 7.5 is defined as "meeting our expectations for the assignment." A 10 corresponds to an excellent job by a professional team. We give few 10s, and seem to give an average grade of about 8.5. In our experience, grading the course as a whole is quite difficult. The problem is that teamwork reduces the variance in grades.
Example Projects
We maintain a list of some of the projects students have completed in our courses. Photographs are available showing some of the projects: