Section 200: Monday/Wednesday 1:00PM-2:30PM 1109 FXB (Subject to change)

DESIGN: THE NEXT GENERATION
Susan Montgomery/Rodney Johnson

One of the roles of engineers is to design systems, and to communicate these designs to a variety of audiences. In this section you will experience the engineering design process by designing the next generation of a device. Teams of four students will:

1. Determine the needs of potential users of the device
2. Design and conduct experiments to compare the performance of two existing models of this device, then analyze the data appropriately
3. Reverse engineer the two models to better understand their performance
4. Determine the key engineering principles that drive the performance of the device
5. Suggest and examine possible improvements that will better meet the users' needs.
6. Propose the next generation design for the device

We will prepare you to perform both the design and communications requirements through sessions on:

1. Market analysis: Understanding customer's goals and objectives
2. Developing meaningful quantitative comparisons of performance
3. Statistics: Describing populations and fitting data using linear regression
4. Reverse engineering and functional structure of devices
5. Developing and evaluating engineering design ideas
6. Environmental and ethical issues in engineering
7. Working productively in design teams
8. Professional communications and audience analysis
9. Report structure and purpose
10. Constructing and evaluating arguments
11. Visual communication
12. Designing and delivering effective oral presentations

The major assignments as you progress through the semester will include:

1. Approximately 7 homework assignments, including an ethics assignment
2. A team brochure, highlighting the strengths of your team members, as well as an oral introductory presentation of your team to your recitation section
3. Individual and team proposals, in which you propose devices to investigate and present your project plan.
4. Two intermediate reports to show progress and receive feedback from instructors
5. An oral design brief, to present your progress to the class and get additional feedback
6. The final written design proposal, the culmination of your semester's work
7. A midterm exam and a final to assess individual performance

The course instructors will work with the design teams to review team notebooks and provide guidance in the technical and communication aspects of the project, as well as on team effectiveness. The course grade will be based on approximately 55% individual and 45% team performance

This section should be of particular interest to students considering mechanical engineering as a major and students who got in trouble for taking appliances apart when they were children.