David L. Jaffe, MS
Lathrop Library Classroom 282
Tuesdays & Thursdays from 4:30pm to 5:50pm

Mid-term Team Assignment

Overview

This is the mid-term assignment for students working on team projects for three credits.

For your mid-term assignment you are asked to form a team, select a candidate project; contact the individual who suggested the project and interview an individual with a disability or an older adult (or family members or health care professionals) who would benefit from the project to better understand the problem; gather information on existing commercial products and research; determine the magnitude of the problem; brainstorm and evaluate potential solutions; select the top three design concepts; fabricate, test, and refine prototype solutions; present your progress; and submit a mid-term report.

Contents

• Tasks / Activities
• Mid-term Presentation
• Mid-term Report
• Presentation and Report Grading
• Grading

Tasks / Activities

For this assignment you are asked to pursue and report on the following tasks / activities. Note that these tasks / activities are not necessarily meant to be performed in chronological order.

• Read the 2019 Candidate Team Project offerings prior to Project Pitch Day - Thursday, January 9th.

• Fill out the Project Preferences for Students Working on Team Projects handout, indicating your interest in each project during the project pitch presentations.

• Select your top five project preferences, providing its ordinal (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th) ranking at the end of all the project pitches.

• Hand in this form at the end of the class session. Information from all the forms will be posted online.

• Identify and contact other students with similar project interests.

• Form a project team of three members. (Team members must not include students on the Wait List.)

• Agree upon a team project from the list of project suggestions.

  Note: Forming a team and selecting a project may not happen in the orderly manner described.

• Select a suitable and appropriate name for your team.

  Random Team Name Generator

  Creative Team Names

  Cool Team Names

• Email your team's name, project selection, and list of members to the instructor by 5pm Friday, January 17th.

• Contact the individual(s) listed who suggested the project and get information including details about the problem, the disability group(s) targeted, the current solution employed (if any) and its shortcomings or limitations, the potential benefits of an improved solution, and the design features / specifications from his/her point of view.

• Identify and interview at least one individual who is affected by this problem and determine specifically how it affects him / her, the benefits of an improved solution, and the design features / specifications from his / her point of view.

• Gather information on other solution alternatives including commercially available products, research projects, and previous student projects. Consider why those products, research, and projects have not been more successful. Here are some companies that sell assistive technology products or have an online database of devices:

  • Abledata, North Coast Medical, Smith & Nephew, Infogrip, Access Ingenuity, Sammons Preston, Alimed, Allegro Medical, EnableMart, and Therapro.

• Determine the magnitude of the problem and identify all the populations who may benefit from an improved solution.

• Brainstorm possible project solutions and select at least three promising design alternatives. (See Example Spreadsheet for Comparing Design Concepts)

• Provide a concise and convincing statement of how your project might address the problem. Outline general design concepts and identify new technology that might be brought to bear on it.

• Begin prototyping solutions starting with sketches, CAD models, and low resolution 3D physical models.

• Meet as a team with

  • the course instructor to communicate project progress (see Weekly Reports),

  • the person who suggested the project or an individual with a disability or older adult who would benefit from the project to test and discuss the merits of your developing design - what works well and what looks promising and what requires further analysis, thought, and redesign.

  • course resource people for feedback on your design concept

• Fabricate a series of increasingly refined functional prototypes, testing them with the user, an individual with a disability or older adult.

• Refine your prototypes to fully address and meet project goals.

• Iterate the fabrication / testing / analysis / redesign cycle as time permits.

• Participate fully in the class including attending lectures as required, listening actively, posing questions to the guest lecturers and the course instructor, engaging in class discussions, verbalizing thoughts and analyses, reading and responding to emails from the course instructor, and communicating team project progress.

• Present your team's progress (7 minutes, with PowerPoint slides) in class on Tuesday, February 11th as described below.

• Submit a mid-term report as described below.

For next time:
In the next assignment your team will asked to choose a specific design concept and fabricate / test a functional prototype. Teams will present their design in class and submit a Final Report and Individual Reflection.

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Mid-term Presentation

Your team will have just seven minutes for your in-class mid-term presentation covering your project progress on Tuesday, February 11th.

One way to meet your team project presentation time limit is to enable PowerPoint's timed slide advance feature. (Each slide can have its own timing.) This was reported to increase the quality of the presentation.

Your team is encouraged to use PowerPoint slides in your presentation. Please email your slideshow to the course instructor by noon on the date of the presentation so it can be loaded onto his laptop. (Please upload any videos to YouTube and link to them in your slides.) All team members should participate in the presentation.

A suggested presentation outline is:

• Introduction of team and its members
• Brief abstract
• Statement of problem
• Magnitude of problem addressed by this project
• Discussion of interviews with those who suggested the project and potential users
• Summary of design criteria
• Identification of existing solutions and discussion of their limitations
• Description of brainstormed design concepts
• Analysis of considered design alternatives
• Description of top selected design concepts, including their technical feasibility, engineering difficulty, estimated cost, user acceptance, safety considerations, etc
• Design visualizations: photographs, videos, sketches, drawings, models, and prototypes
• Future work and challenges for continuing the project toward fabrication and testing with users

Other presentation considerations and suggestions: (Due to the limited class time for presentations, there will be no opportunity for teams to field questions.)

• Project status - what has been done, what remains
• Problems encountered, resolved, and pending
• Expenses expected if the project is to be continued into the Spring Quarter
• Plans for the remainder of the quarter

Your team will be judged on the overall quality of the presentation, the effectiveness of your design process, and your progress toward a design solution using the following metrics:

• Delivery: (How the team presented) - professionalism, enthusiasm, conviction, confidence, energy, volume
• Process: (How the team addressed the problem) - problem information, background research, design concepts brainstormed & prototyped, testing & evaluation
• Presentation: Presentation: (What the team presented) - clarity, organization, and completeness of the information presented
• Design: (What the team produced) - creativity, originality, functionality of the design concept and the likelihood it will meet the user's needs
• Overall: (Overall score) - combined impression of presentation and project effort

Most important - practice your presentation to maximize the quality of its content, clarity, conciseness, completeness, understanding of your design decisions, creativity, pacing, and timing.

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Mid-Term Report

Your team's report should be submitted by email, be at least 5 pages, and is due on Tuesday, February 18th by 5pm. The suggested format is:

• Cover page - include course name & year, project title, team name, team member's names, and team members' photos (do not include a page number on the cover page)

• Abstract - one paragraph summary of objectives, approach taken, and results of the project so far

• Introduction - problem to be addressed, problem background

• Objectives - project goals and rationale

• Design criteria - background research, interviews with project suggestors and potential users, design specifications, brainstormed design alternatives (at least 3)

• Methods - what did your team do and why - include any sketching, prototyping, model building, preliminary testing, analyses of design alternatives

• Results - discuss specifics of your design alternatives such as features, benefits, aesthetics, cost, safety, reliability, usability, test results, feedback from users, etc.

• Discussion - include engineering challenges and suggestions to further develop and fabricate a chosen design

• Next steps - assuming this project will be pursued in ME113 or as directed study, identify future challenges and include a timetable of major tasks to produce and test a functional prototype

• Additional - optionally address issues relating to commercialization including technical feasibility, engineering difficulties, safety considerations, potential manufacturing, cost of materials, mass production, marketing, advertising, distribution, sales, licensing, etc

• Images - embed photographs, drawings, graphs, and sketches documenting your design process and activities throughout the body of the document, not at the end

• References - bibliographic and web citations

• Acknowledgements - mention all individuals and facilities who helped your team

• Appendices - detailed sketches, calculations, testing notes, relevant vendor information, etc. that are referenced in the main body of the report

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Mid-term Presentation and Report Check List

Project:
Team Name:
Team Members:

1. Get information from project suggestor:
   1. problem need
   2. disability groups targeted
   3. current solutions
   4. shortcomings of current solutions
   5. potential benefits of an improved solution
   6. solution specifications
2. Get information from person with disability:
   1. how problem affects him/her
   2. benefits of improved solution
   3. solution specifications
3. Get information from other sources:
   1. commercially available products
   2. research projects
   3. student projects
4. Get information about problem:
   1. magnitude
   2. populations who may benefit
5. Provide information about student project:
   1. how need/problem is to be addressed
   2. outline design concepts
   3. use of new technology
6. Overall quality of design process employed
7. Overall quality of presentation
8. Other comments
9. Score xx/25
10. Suggested grade

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Grading

* Participation includes actively listening, posing questions to the guest speakers and the course instructor, engaging in class discussions, verbalizing thoughts and analyses, and submitting Weekly Individual Reports or meeting individually or as a team with the course instructor.

Updated 02/14/2020