Lab sections are to begin promptly, 5 minutes after
their nominal starting time. Punctuality is an important aspect of
teamwork so showing up on time is essential. This applies to both
students and instructors. If you are late and people are waiting, you are wasting their time.
Students and instructors must attend all of their lab sessions.
If you will be missing a lab session, please make advanced arrangements
so that your teammates can make adjustments. Let your instructor
know that you will be away.
In a typical lab, roughly 1/2 of the time will be spent giving progress
updates and planning next steps, and at least 1/2 of the lab time
will be spent working on project tasks.
Preparation before lab #1
Please review the course website well enough to recall
the project workflow and milestones.
Review the topics under the team manual menu carefully, especially
the team officer roles— electing officers is an important part of the first lab. Think
about roles that you would like to assume.
You may want somebody on your team to prepare a team-member information
spreadsheet, or be prepared to build the table directly in your team's wiki (see instructions below in the as a complete team
section). A template for this table has been provided on the wiki. Password information needed to log into your team wiki will be provided by email on Monday evening before the first lab.
Read the primer on how to run meetings.
Be sure to have prepared your brainstorming deliverable.
Review the tutorial on group idea generation so that you are familiar with the process. If there is time, you will do additional idea generation during lab.
Be prepared to give a short summary presentation
about the project opportunities that you saw at the project
ideas fair (~5 minutes per project).
Remember that you need to keep track of your time using the project timesheet.
What's due
Bring your completed brainstorming deliverable (prepared for submission) and your design
notebook to the lab read for the start of lab
Officer election results
must be submitted using the officer information form by your section's acting system integrator, right after the lab meeting (please include officer email addresses).
Recommended lab #1 activities
It is recommended that you begin the lab with the two sections
together for team-wide introductions and brief summaries of what you
saw at the project ideas
fair. Then, divide into individual sections for the officer
nomination process and review of ideas from you individual brainstorming.
As a complete team (both sections
together)
Distribute the student and staff name cards. Ideally
the instructors will distribute these around the table before everyone
arrives for lab. The name cards will be on a shelf in the conference
room. At the end of each lab meeting, the name cards should be collected
and put back on the shelf.
Introductions around the table should be made.
While the introductions are taking place, a student should fill in a spreadsheet or use the table in the team's wiki, recording the following information: team member
name, their interests, whether they have transportation, how heavy
their course load is during the term, IM name, and cell
number as available. It will be useful to make two charts: one for
the A section, and one for the B section. Be sure to project the chart so that all can see it as it is completed (there is a built-in projector in your meeting room).
The lab instructors should also briefly say what they
do and describe their interests.
Students should present the short summaries they prepared for each
of the projects they were assigned to at the ideas
fair. It would be useful to project the idea fair project abstracts during this discussion.
Close the meeting room divider and continue the lab with the two
sections working separately.
As individual sections
You may want to use the projector in the conference room to display the lab instructions to help structure your process. For the team that is not on the side of the room with the ceiling mounted projector, you may also pick up a table top projector (certs required).
Identify persons in your section that are interested
in the system integrator
position. Allow each person to briefly say why they want to
be an integrator. Develop a schedule for the candidate system
integrators to rotate through during the first few weeks
of the course. Each candidate should have at least one week to tryout at the position. When the tryout rotation is complete, the team can vote on
a permanent system integrator. Ideally this would be no later in
the term than a week before the sketch
model review.
Now, the first system integrator in the rotation should take on
the responsibility for running the rest of the lab meeting, as well as ensuring that minutes for today’s lab meeting
are taken and distributed via the team's wiki. The
minutes for today’s lab should include the table constructed
during team introductions and all decisions from the remainder of
the lab. This will include choices for team officers, results from
an idea clustering exercise, and task forces assigned to meet deliverables
for next week's lab. Files should be uploaded to the team wiki. (Your team also has an
Athena locker named 2.009_yourTeamColor that can be used to share files.
Instructions for connecting
to Athena are available).
Elect one person in your section for each of the team officer positions: financial
officer, safety
officer, information
officer, and tool
officer. Please use a democratic election process that has been agreed upon
by the section. Each officer needs to understand their responsibilities
in detail. It may be helpful to project the role description for each officer under consideration.
You will also need to chose a wiki master. This person will be responsible for overseeing the team wiki and will be the only person with permissions to delete or rename pages.
Once you have selected officers, please submit this information using the online form.
Note: financial officers will need to attend a credit card orientation
session and a rfp training session. Information officers will need to attend a session with the librarians. System integrators will attend a communications workshop.
Spend about 1/2 hour of the lab looking at the ideas you prepared
for the individual brainstorming deliverable. Each student should pin up and
briefly describe their ideas (push pins will be in the lab). Then, go
through the exercise of working en-mass to classify the ideas into
a small sets of similar ideas and giving descriptive names to the
clusters.
Tip: At this stage the goal is not to eliminate/select specific ideas...we
do not know enough about the ideas. The goal is to identify sets of general product
categories/opportunities for further investigation. Ideas should
be clustered based upon the need/issue, not the embodiment envisioned
in the sketches. |
labeled clusters of sorted ideas (theme: toys)
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Once you have the clusters named, you will want to decide which idea areas are of the most interest for additional exploration. You might give each team member three stickies and allow them to vote for the their top three. This should provide guidance on the areas that are most interesting to the team.
If there is enough time, conduct a group brainstorming session to generate additional ideas within your three chosen areas.
Talk about what needs to happen during lab
next week. The main goal will be to gather information in preparation
for the 3-ideas
presentation. Before next week the team will need to do background work for its three chosen idea
areas (possible customers and their key needs, relevant existing
products, market potential, more product ideas, and some technical feasibility analysis).
Of course, if something new and interesting comes up in the process of your research, that new direction can be explored as well. Keep in mind that at least one product idea loosely related to, or inspired by, the idea
fair should be presented at the 3-ideas presentation.
Remember: The research and idea generation during this phase of the project
is very important because it will determine your team's
direction for the entire term.
Divide the team into task
forces as needed, following the guidelines
for creating task forces. Clarify what the different groups
are to deliver and how the system integrator will facilitate coordination
between the different task
forces.
Submit a copy of your brainstorming
assignment to your instructor before leaving lab. Your
team may also want to photocopy a complete set
of all brainstorming sketches for each section member. There is a copy machine in the 2.009 Pappalardo lab computer area.
Other notes about the lab:
A TA will show up during your lab section to take your picture. These pictures will be put on your
team web-page.
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