PROJECT BACKGROUND AND SCHEDULE

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Your challenge in the project portion of this course is to design a new product and to produce a prototype version of it. The goal of this exercise is to learn principles and methodologies of product development in a realistic context. Project ideas may come from the following sources:

• Student-Conceived Projects
• Faculty-Suggested Projects
• Industrially-Sponsored Projects

Faculty-suggested and industrially-sponsored project options are described in the following pages, and will be discussed further in the September 6th class session. Guidelines for student-conceived projects are as follows:

• There should be a demonstrable market for your product. One good way to verify a market need is to identify existing products that meet the need. Your product need not be a variant of an existing product, but the market need addressed by your product should be clearly evident. The product does not have to have a tremendous economic potential, but should at least be an attractive opportunity for a small firm.
• If you choose a physical hardware product (rather than a software user interface design), the product should have a high likelihood of containing fewer than 10 parts. Although you cannot anticipate the design details, it is easy to anticipate that an electric drill will have more than 10 parts and a garlic press fewer than 10.
• You should be confident of being able to build a reasonable prototype of the product. If you choose to make a hardware product, you must have access to prototyping capabilities such as machining processes and the skill sets to run them! For software user interface products, you should have access to proficiency in Web page design and/or PowerPoint.
• The product should require no basic technological breakthroughs. We do not have time to deal with large technological uncertainties. In fact, we are more concerned that you have a specific market need in mind for your project than that you attempt to develop new technologies.
• You should have access to more than five potential "lead users" of the product (more than 20 would be nice.)
• Save any highly proprietary ideas for another context, as we will be quite open in discussing the projects in class and do not wish to be constrained by proprietary information.
• The most successful projects tend to have at least one team member with strong personal interest in the target market.
• Most products are really not very well designed. Thus, if you pick almost any product that satisfies these general guidelines, you will likely be able to develop a product that is superior to everything currently on the market.

Projects adhering to these guidelines will have the greatest probability of success. Projects from last year's class can be reviewed through the class web page.

PROJECT SCHEDULE

All assignments must be handed in at the beginning of the class session in which they are due. Note that each of these assignments is intended to pace the development process for your product. There is virtually no slack in this schedule and so assignments must be competed on or before the scheduled due date in order to maintain the project schedule.

All assignments except the project proposal are to be completed as a team.

Project Proposal and Selection: Friday, September 6th

A list of faculty-suggested projects is provided at the end of this document. For those of you wishing to propose your own project, you must prepare a project proposal in any format that fits on one 8.5 x 11 page (one side only). If you provide a copy to one of us by 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 5th, we will photocopy the proposals and distribute them in class on September 6th. If you miss the deadline, bring 45 copies to class. Proposals should include:

_ A brief, descriptive project title (2-4 words)

_ Your name, phone number, e-mail, and school/department affiliation

_ A description of the product opportunity you have identified. Your description may include any of the following: Documentation of the market need, shortcomings of existing competitive products, and definition of the target market and its size.

_ Please do not present any of your own product ideas at this point. Our strict focus in this phase of the course is on the market opportunity and not on solution concepts.

Come to class prepared to give a VERY SHORT presentation on your project. Your presentation should include:

_ Your name and school/department affiliation

_ A verbal or visual demonstration of the product opportunity you have described in your proposal. Given that the audience will be able to read your proposal at their leisure, you might spend your time explaining the richness of the market opportunity or demonstrating existing competitive products.

_ Any special skills or assets you have (marketing expertise, access to a multimedia computer, user interface design expertise)

By 5 p.m. on Friday, September 6th, you must decide on your project preferences. (You may do this during class and submit them by the end of the class session, or send e-mail to BOTH of us by the end of the day.) You should list the THREE projects on which you would most like to work in order of preference. If you would like to work with a particular group of classmates, recalling that your group must contain engineering and MBA students, please list their names on your paper as well.

We will process your preferences and assign teams. You will be notified of team assignments by Monday, September 9th.

Mission Statement and Customer/User Needs Assessment Plan: Due Friday, September 20th

To start your design project, you will have to read Chapter 3: Identifying Customer Needs. Prepare a Mission Statement (as shown on page 37 of that chapter) and a plan for assessing customer and user needs for your product. Hand in three copies of both during this class session. (NOTE: We will ask for three copies of each project assignment you complete this semester. This will allow both faculty and the TA to review your work immediately without having to wait for copy time.) From this planning, you should be able to launch your customer and user needs assessment process.

Customer and User Needs: Presentation to the class on October 9th and 11th

This will be the first of three presentations you will give on your product development project. Plan 10 minutes MAXIMUM for the presentation so that we can fit all projects into two class sessions. If you plan to use the in-class podium to give your presentation, make very sure that it works before you come to class, as we will not have time to spend trying to bring up your presentation materials.

Your presentation should cover the following: a mission statement, such as is shown on page 37 of your textbook, a brief review of the means used to collect customer and user needs information, a summary of the identified customer and user needs, and a brief summary of lessons learned in the process to date. Please bring a hardcopy report to class as well to be turned in along with a copy of your slides. Bring three copies.

Come to class prepared to actively listen to your peers talk about their projects, ask them constructive questions and provide them feedback on the direction their projects are taking.

Concept Sketches and Descriptions: Due Wednesday, October 23rd

Hand in sketches and bullet-point descriptions of 10 to 20 alternative product concepts for your project. Describe some of the steps of your concept generation process. Prepare a list of the target specifications and provide documentation to support these decisions. Remember to make three copies.

Concept Selection and Proof-of-Concept Prototype: Presentation to class November 6th and 8th

Prepare a 10-minute (maximum) presentation of your product concept. The presentation should include a very brief review of your mission statement and customer needs, with particular attention to anything that may have changed since the last presentation. You should also share your selected concept, and your key target specifications. In this presentation, you should also demonstrate some form of "proof-of-concept" prototype. We may divide the class into two groups for these presentations, allowing for more peer discussion of the results.

Along with a copy of your slides, hand in a sketch of the concept you intend to pursue. Show the concept selection matrix (screening or scoring) that you used. Also, prepare a list of the key uncertainties or questions you still need to address to determine the viability of your product. For each one, specify an associated plan of action (such as analysis, mock-ups, interviews, experiments, etc.) Remember three copies.

From this point forward, your focus will be on testing your product concept with your customer base, obtaining feedback, incorporating it into your product, and preparing the final product prototype. You will also perform some rough financial analysis of the product.

Final Product Specifications and Financial Analysis: Due Friday, November 22nd

Document the final specifications you intend to achieve. How will you evaluate how well your design meets the final specifications? Develop an economic analysis of your product following the guidelines provided in Chapter 11 of the book. Turn in three copies of both in class.

Presentation of Final Prototype: December 4th and 6th

Final Presentation and Final Prototype: DUE IN CLASS WEDNESDAY and FRIDAY, 12/4, 6

Per the feedback from the class discussion, the final presentation will have a combination of an 8-minute presentation and a trade show poster session (30 min.). Your presentation should concentrate on the product itself, although you may wish to emphasize any particularly impressive portions of your development process. An effective presentation includes overhead slides or computer projection along with a display of the product. This presentation should be of the quality you would make to convince a top management group to purchase the rights to your product or to fund its final development and launch. You should provide a brief introduction to your product, but most of the presentation should pick up where the previous ones left off. If you have made major changes to your products you should present them. Your trade- show poster should have more detail on the final product specifications, costing, prototype and testing. You need to present your prototype mock-ups or your full prototype and turn them in. You will also need to present the results of your user testing on these as well. In addition, turn in any answers to questions Prof. Agogino asked based on her and Andy Dong's feedback on your Product Specifications and Financial Analysis (this was sent out by email on Tues., Nov. 26.) This need not be included in your presentation, but you may want to include this in your trade show presentation.

Each team must turn in three copy of their presentation slides, poster slides as well as one copy of their prototype product. You may submit material on diskette if you like. Provide the URL if the interface can be viewed from the WWW.

In addition, we would like each individual to spend some time reflecting on the new product development process in which his or her team engaged, and to write a two-page paper on that process. In particular, we wish to hear about key lessons learned, major obstacles overcome, and things you would do differently next time.

What needs to be turned in:

1. Three copies of presentation slides and trade-show poster slides.
2. Three copies of answers to questions asked in Prof. Agogino's email of 11-26 on your Product Specifications and Financial Analysis. (Please make this short and to the point.)
3. Three copies of results of user testing on prototype or prototype mock-ups. (Please make this short and to the point.)
4. One copy of prototype or prototype mock-ups. This may be on disk.
5. Three copies of two-page paper on "lessons learned". All students may turn this in on Friday, Dec. 6 regardless of when your project is presented. In fact, as this is the requirement in lieu of a final exam, this can be turned in anytime prior to the scheduled final date of Dec. 14. Email input is fine.

Project Feedback and Review: December 14th

Come prepared to discuss the process you used to test your prototypes with your customers. Show the ways in which your product changed as a result. Summarize the key lessons you have learned from the development project.

Last modified on 26 November 1996 by Alice Agogino