TY - GEN
T1 - Towards a design model for student Graduation Projects - A case study
AU - Sivaloganathan, Sangarapillai
AU - Shahin, Tamer
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - A Graduation Project (or senior capstone design project) is an important constituent of an engineering program. It has several unique characteristics such as: The end product is a proof of product concept as opposed to a finished product that can be made and sold; the students are novices in design and lack product specific knowledge; and so on. It is therefore appropriate to have a special design model for Graduation projects. The model should have appropriate scaffolds to facilitate the design process. Observations of students taking a graduation project showed that design interpretation of an existing similar product was very useful to the students and was a crucial stage in providing the students with the understanding and confidence needed that experienced designers rely on when designing products. A design model with these provisions was proposed and the model was tested with two student groups designing a similar product: Development of a vertical access platform. Results were consistent with previous observations in that the student group that performed the new model that integrated design interpretation was able to better and more quickly understand the task at hand and allowed them to generate more innovative concepts, which they were not able to do before the design interpretation stage.
AB - A Graduation Project (or senior capstone design project) is an important constituent of an engineering program. It has several unique characteristics such as: The end product is a proof of product concept as opposed to a finished product that can be made and sold; the students are novices in design and lack product specific knowledge; and so on. It is therefore appropriate to have a special design model for Graduation projects. The model should have appropriate scaffolds to facilitate the design process. Observations of students taking a graduation project showed that design interpretation of an existing similar product was very useful to the students and was a crucial stage in providing the students with the understanding and confidence needed that experienced designers rely on when designing products. A design model with these provisions was proposed and the model was tested with two student groups designing a similar product: Development of a vertical access platform. Results were consistent with previous observations in that the student group that performed the new model that integrated design interpretation was able to better and more quickly understand the task at hand and allowed them to generate more innovative concepts, which they were not able to do before the design interpretation stage.
KW - Design model
KW - Graduation projects
KW - Specialist knowledge
KW - Systematic design
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84891288119
SN - 9781904670421
T3 - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Design Education - Growing Our Future, EPDE 2013
SP - 338
EP - 343
BT - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education
T2 - 15th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Design Education - Growing Our Future, EPDE 2013
Y2 - 5 September 2013 through 6 September 2013
ER -