Small Group Assignment

We had some rainy weather and some of us experienced the good and bad sides of umbrellas. Your task is to come up with a design of an umbrella-like thing that improves on some of these disadvantages. In addition, you need to add one function to the "thing" which is normally not found in umbrellas.

Normally, this would be a lengthy, iterative design process with several phases and we'll do exactly this in the larger group project. This time, we'll keep it short. Each group will have to hand in the following.

• Your final design marked as such and all intermediate sketches, doodles, notes, etc. that led to the final design. Order them according to creation date. Your sketches, etc. need to be hand drawn, not produced with some fancy software tool. The final design must be neat and clear. The others, well, they don't have to. But I want to see them anyway because the process matters!
• Write a report (this time with some software tool, please) including the following parts. Use the same order and same headings, please.

  Need

  Describe the need for your product and your target group. Make the case that there is a market for your product.

  Analysis

  Analyze the functionality (what tasks does your solution support), the users (your target population) and context in which they are going to use it. Be detailed but avoid being unnecessarily verbose. Focus on those characteristics that are relevant for your design problem.

  Criteria

  Spell out clearly and explicitly what criteria you are using to evaluate your intermediate and final designs. Saying "it must be easy to use" is useless. Be more specific. If the criteria are not measurable, they are useless. That is, you can't just say over and over in a loud voice "mine's better."

  Design alternatives

  Briefly describe your designs (you had some alternatives in mind) and how they stack up given your criteria.

  Final design

  Evaluate your final design. What has worked out well? Where are still some problems?

  Reflection

  Reflect on your design process. Where did you run into problems? What could be done better? How would you do it next time? What else should you have known before you started this project?

Due dates: Bring your current design with you after one week so we can look at it using the overhead projector and discuss it. Also, email me a draft of your report for feedback so that your final report will be more on target.

Groups: The groups were generated by an AI computer program based on your skills and preferences. Furthermore, I added a "force" to mix students with different majors so that you are forced to deal with somebody who is learning some different methods to solve problems than you.

1. Enzo, Lily Ann
2. Dan, Lily
3. Mohammed, Fahed
4. Courtney, Carley
5. Michelle, Ryan
6. Julian, Ayoub, Nick