In-Class Work 2: From a Vague Wish to a Real Specification
We do this live in class. You’ll be in a small breakout room for about 15 minutes. I’ll tell you the exact time in class.
Your group has a customer. The customer has told you what they want, but not in a form you can design from.
Your room’s request, by room number:
- Room 1: “I want a better desk lamp.”
- Room 2: “The line at the campus food cart takes too long.”
- Room 3: “I need to keep my greenhouse from freezing.”
- Room 4: “The crosswalk by the elementary school isn’t safe.”
- Room 5: “I want a phone mount for my car that doesn’t suck.”
- Room 6: “The bus stop by my house has no shelter, and it rains all winter.”
- Room 7: “My dog keeps getting out of the yard.”
Work through four things:
- Who is the customer, specifically? Not “people.” A named, described person or group with a situation. Different customers produce completely different products
- Write three constraints. Pass/fail. Each one needs a number and a unit. If you can’t put a number on it, it isn’t a constraint yet; finding the number is part of the job
- Write three criteria, ranked. These are how you’d choose between designs that all pass the constraints
- Name one thing you’d need to go find out before designing anything, and say how you’d find it. Measure something? Ask someone? Look up a standard?
After I close the breakout rooms, we’ll meet again in the main Zoom session. Pick one person to briefly share your group’s answers with the class. We may discuss them for a few minutes.
You may disagree about the numbers, which is OK and expected. Deciding what the number should be, for example how much “must cost under X” is, is a design decision, and there is no answer key.
Each of you submits the group’s answer. Type it into the Moodle submission box:
- First line: everyone’s full names, separated by commas
- Second line: your room number and who the group’s customer turned out to be
- Who the group’s customer is, in one or two sentences
- The group’s three constraints, one per line, each with a number and a unit
- The group’s three criteria, one per line, ranked, most important first
- The one thing the group would go find out, and how, in one or two sentences
Grading. Everyone in the group gets the same score. If you do not submit, you get no credit for that session. Grading and the AI policy are in the syllabus. One thing specific to this one: a constraint without a number in it doesn’t count as a constraint. “It should be affordable” is a wish; “$40 or less” is a constraint.