Group+Project+Guidelines

The final deliverable of the course is a group project (3-4 people) involving analysis and redesign of a technological artifact related to issues of sustainability or attention to the underserved population of the world (e.g., designing for the "other 90%").
 * Sustainable Technology Design Project– (completed March 22 -30%) **

There are many possible avenues of investigation – during lab, we will work with project groups to help formulate a viable project. The only requirement is that the artifact in question must involve an analysis of based on research on sustainability or underserved communities.

There are three interim deadlines to structure progress in this assignment.

a) Proposal and Ideation (March 8 – 10%)

Break down your intended project, summarizing what you're intending to investigate and providing some background research and inspiration to your design concept.

In the case of sustainability, how is your project aiming to improve sustainable design and development? In the case of targeting underserved communities, who are they? How will your project address their concerns?

An executive summary of your intent and focus - approximately 500-750 words - will be fine at this stage. Design inspirations can be included at the end as an appendix.

Please post this on your group wiki, with comments left open (check "manage wiki -> permissions") so we can all provide feedback - you do want to provide feedback on other projects by the end of the week of the 15th so that other groups can benefit from your input!

b) Scenarios and Requirements (Mar. 15 – 5%)

Provide scenarios of use based on personas - at least one per person in the group.

Scenarios are descriptions of problems that currently exist - not related to your proposed redesign.

From this determine requirements based on the MoSCoW framework.

c) Revised Design – Presentation and Documentation (Mar. 22 – 15%)

Based on further research, create a low-fidelty prototype of the design notions you've explored. It should represent a progression of what you've done since the first stage and address the concerns you've mentioned in the second stage. Presentation of the prototype will be done in labs in small 6-7 minute presentations in a "science fair" style (e.g small presentations with one of us vs. in front of the whole class.