User-Centered Product Definition for Creative Engineering Design

Instructor: MarkCutkosky (+39 328 771 4566, cutkosky@stanford.edu ). You can often find me in the laboratory of Prof. Cesare Stefanini.

• Dates: 5 March - 16 April 2013. Class times are Tuesday/Thursday at 14:30, with a couple of breaks during last week of March (Cutkosky at Washington DC) and for Pasqua: Detailed Schedule (PDF)
• Location: Aula 1 + other rooms, as needed, at SSSA Pontedera

Description:
The objective of this short course is to give participants an introduction to some of the methods used in the Stanford M.E. Design Group, the d.School and design firms in “Silicon Valley,” to promote user-centered design. The course content is taken in part from the first quarter of a graduate design sequence at Stanford, ME310abc, and focuses on the early stages of product development, when the main challenge is to determine what to design. In ME310, teams of graduate students at Stanford collaborate with partner teams at various universities around the world to address problem statements provided by corporate partners. Specific methods introduced in the first part of the course include: structured brainstorming and design definition, user and technology benchmarking, persona development and critical experience and critical function prototyping.

For the purposes of this short course, participants will form teams to address a technology- driven challenge with sample materials provided by the instructor. After experiencing and practicing the design methods introduced, participants will present design proposals for possible product development.

The course is recommended for graduate engineers interested in engineering design that addresses the (sometimes hidden) needs of users. Enrollment will be limited to 32 participants (8 teams of 4). Informally, it is also a prologue to the design course that Prof. Cesare Stefanini will be conducting this spring.

1.  The Nine Groups and their ideas

• Photos and results from the "Hardware Bazaar" of design prototypes

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Group details and project notes

2.  Schedule and Materials

2.1  Week 1: Tuesday

• Cutkosky intro slides (PDF)
• A version of the ABC Deep Dive video on the IDEO design process is available on You Tube
  • A couple more videos: A recent video from CBS 60 Minutes on IDEO -- nice section on empathy and chairs for fidgety kids (for Steelcase) and discussions about Steve Jobs and the d.school
  • A follow up on working in diverse teams Feb. 2013. Nice brainstorming bit half way through.
• Link to Douglass Wilde's Teamology book

2.2  Week 1: Thursday

• Excerpts from ME310 Corning project (a "technology push" project): slides, handout

2.3  Week 2: Tuesday

• The technology of directional adhesion - slides adapted from a presentation at MRS on what gecko-inspired directional adhesion is and how it actually works. This is part of "technology benchmarking," to understand what the technology can do and how it might be used.

2.4  Week 2: Thursday

• Teams present their current ideas and potential users.
• See ShortCourseGruppi page for individual notes & links for each team.

2.5  Week 3: Tuesday

• Space Junk (NASA) as an example application to explore for a "usage case"
• Grasping a solar panel (mp4 showing that opposed pads of adhesive can grasp a solar panel, such as might be found on some space debris.
• Grasping a "satellite": example of a Critical Function Prototype using a small table on wheels as a substitute for a satellite to explore the basic ability to stick to a moving object.

A link to Dr. Aaron Parness at NASA JPL, leading the project on grasping space debris with gecko-inspired adhesives

2.6  Week 3: Thursday

• Attach:CFP-CEP.pdf: Exploring Critical Function Prototypes and Critical Experience Prototypes. A brief introduction and some examples before we break into groups to brainstorm our own ideas.
• Tufts VUE software (for Mac and PC, free for academic use) -- useful for quickly building various graphs (How/Why, Structure/Function, etc.) as seen in the slides above.

2.7  Week4

No class this week (Cutkosky in Washington DC) but please be thinking about your Critical Function or Critical Experience prototype!

2.8  Week5 Thursday

4 April: I would like to meet with each group in the prototyping area ("sala pranzo" al terzo piano) where we can look at the prototyping supplies and think concretely about what each group could put together for a Critical Function or Critical Experience prototype.

Based on previous meetings, I suggest this schedule

NEW: A video showing what you can do with two opposed pads on a small quadrotor. This was taken last week by one of Cutkosky's students visiting at U. Maryland with the lab of Prof. Sean Humbert.

2.9  Week6: Tuesday

9 April: I would like to meet again with each group in the prototyping area ("sala pranzo" al terzo piano) to see how the Critical Function or Critical Experience prototypes have developed and to prepare for Thursday.

2.10  Week6: Thursday

11 April: Hardware Bazaar -- each group gets a table to show their CFP or CEP and give people their elevator pitch describing what their idea is and what they have learned.

• A couple of introductory slides on the setup
• Some photos and videos from the event

2.11  Week7: Tuesday

16 April: Ultimo giorno!

• Final wrap-up slides from Cutkosky
• Short presentation from each group