ALEXANDER CUBELLIS

Conceptual Design Report

 

Our group was presented with various problems.  The stakeholders made many claims including that “students need to pay full attention during a lecture” and that “productivity of a student during the lecture” must be maximized. Our group deemed that the stakeholders were unclear in defining their problem statement as they did not specify exactly what problem related to productivity or to the attention of the student needs to be solved. Therefore our group reframed the problem.

 

Reframing:

•  Our group reframed the problem to be that:

Students are distracted due to the lack of sufficient space on which to take notes and of quick and easy access to their supplies due to the small size of tables in some lecture halls.

• This is consistent with the second step in the linear-dynamic model

• Our group then scoped the problem to identify the key objectives and requirements

 

Scoping the Problem:

• Our group selected a list of DFX’s in addition to the ones recommended by the stakeholders to focus the design decision process.

• The DFX’s are outlined in the conceptual design report and their associated metrics. This is the third step in the linear dynamic model.

 

Fractal/Iterative Process:

• Our group implemented various divergent and convergent methods to generate numerous solutions to the problem—namely the method of functional decomposition to generate numerous methods to solve the problem                

• Our group narrowed down the solution set by discarding designs that were not feasible

• Our group then implemented the “comparison” component of the linear-dynamic model to compare four candidate solutions.

 

Quantitative Analysis:

To compare our four candidate solutions, our group used the three following quantitative methods:

A Pugh chart, a pairwise comparison matrix, and a weighted comparison matrix to determine the most effective solution given the constraints and criteria imposed. This is also consistent with the model.

 

Solution N and the Final Solution:

Based upon the Quantitative analysis methods applied, our group was able to determine that of the four candidate designs the “Octopus Arm” design was the most effective and thus was chosen to be taken to the prototyping stage.