39-245
Rapid Design through Virtual and Physical Prototyping

Carnegie Mellon University
Spring 2003

Essay Assignment

E-mail responses to this question to sfinger@ri.cmu.edu by
5pm, Friday January 31

Please send your essay as plain text. If you send me a word document, I will strip out the formatting and save it as a plain text message. I care about content, not format.

Please write an essay of approximately 1000 words, describing how you would go about solving this design problem. Do not design the final product for this assignment, but do describe all steps of the design process you would use to do so. In particular, please address each of the following topics in your essay:

• What steps would you take to organize and execute the design project?

• Would you assemble a design team for this project or not? If so, what kinds of people would you include on your team and why?

• What kinds of information (if any) would you gather, from what sources, and how would such information be used?

• What kinds of people (if any) would you interact with as part of the design project, and for what purposes?

• What factors are likely to influence either the design process or the final design?

• What problems (if any) do you anticipate might occur in the design process, and how would you prepare to deal with them?

• What role (if any) would prototyping play in the process, and what considerations would influence the development of any prototypes you build?

           

sfinger@ri.cmu.edu