Overview
2.s009, Explorations in Product Design, is intended to provide students with a team-based product development experience. Students will design and, to the extent possible, build working alpha prototypes of new products, learning about creativity, product design, teamwork, and working within a budget in a unifying engineering experience. The class is intended to emulate what engineers might experience in a design team at a modern product development firm. As part of a corporate innovation strategy, students will create product opportunities inspired by a very broad product theme.
The course is patterned after 2.009, but due to Covid-19 related policies and safety considerations, there will be significant differences from the learning environment associated with 2.009. Due to the shortened in-person term, the product design process in 2.s009 will be one development iteration shorter than in 2.009. The shortened product development cycle will limit the degree to which products can be resolved. Current policies prohibit many of the in-class, team-based experiential activities conducted in 2.009. Covid-19 related policies severely limit shop capacity, so shop time will be available to each team for prototyping on a limited and scheduled basis.
At the end of the course, an online presentation will showcase each team's work.
Products and final presentations from previous years of 2.009, along with project milestone presentations, are available in the 2.009 gallery.
Key Goals
2.s009 is about experiencing the process, energy, and excitement of identifying new opportunities, developing products, engineering details, improving design skills, and learning strategies/processes for successful innovation that makes a difference. Some of the key goals follow.
- Improve creative-thinking capability.
- Improve ability to identify the significant product opportunities, and to develop appropriate solutions through a structured product development process.
- Improve expertise in constructing models for reasoning about design alternatives. These include estimations, sketches, sketch models, spreadsheets, geometric models, mockups and prototypes.
- Improve engineering expertise and proficiency in techniques for building high quality product models and prototypes.
- Learn about and experience structured methods for working in large teams on a project that requires teamwork to be successful.
- Improve presentation skills using a wide variety of media.
- Develop an understanding of, and enthusiasm for, the engineering activities involved with designing a new product.
- Develop an appreciation for the significance of societal contributions that can be made as a technological innovator.
Lectures
Wednesdays: One video lecture will be released on most Wednesdays. These lectures are asynchronous, and students may watch them at any time. They should be watched by the end of Thursday.
Fridays: 3-5pm, classrooms to be assigned by team. Each team will be in a separate classroom and will watch the video feed from 10-250 and participate in live in-class activities.
Alternate Fridays: on most alternate Fridays, teams will be presenting their work so far for a milestone review.
Milestone Feedback: one video lecture with milestone feedback will be released on most Sundays/Mondays after a milestone presentation. These lectures are asynchronous, and students may watch them at any time. The most benefit will be had by watching them before that week's team meeting.
See the course schedule for more details.
Team Meetings (Labs)
Each student will be assigned to one 2-hour team meeting period, meeting either Mondays 12:30-2:30pm, 3:00-5:00pm, or 7:00-9:00pm. If needed, there may be a Tuesday 9-11AM team meeting period. Team meetings are either in Rm 3-370 or another room TBD. Team assignments are established after the first week of class (registrar section assignments are not used), and team meetings begin the third week of class.
The course is organized around the team meetings, which are used to define the product development process. See the course schedule for information about how the team meetings (labs), lecture and project milestones are coordinated. Lab notes with recommended activities for each week are posted on the course website.
Laboratory Access
Each team will be assigned two 4-hour time slots per week for access to Pappalardo Lab facilities and one 3.5-hour time slot per week for access to the Product Design Laboratory (Rm 3-003). Due to Covid-19 policies, lab facilities have very limited capacity, so each team will need to designate which team members will utilize the lab facility during each alloted time slot. More details about this registration system will be available before labs start.
Grading
Lab instructors are responsible for grading students in their lab section. The grade allocation is primarily determined based upon the team's product design and prototype; design reviews and presentations; design notebooks; and peer reviews.
Some components of the grade are individual, some are common to a lab section, and others are shared by an entire team. The project workflow illustrates how two lab sections are combined to make a single team.
Health and Safety Policies
Due to the current circumstances, 2.s009 will be implementing additional health and safety procedures that must be followed by all students. Details regarding these procedures will be introduced in lecture during the first two weeks of classes.