ECE 520.427: Product Design Lab

Professors:

Name:
Dr. Ralph Etienne-Cummings
Office:
401 Barton Hall
Email:
retienne AT jhu DOT edu
Phone:
410-516-3494

Name:
Dr. R. Jacob Vogelstein
Office:
401 Barton Hall
Email:
jacob DOT vogelstein AT jhuapl DOT edu
Phone:
443-778-2438


Course description:

This project-based course is designed to help students learn how to turn their ideas into commercial products.  In the first half of the course, emphasis will be placed on the product development process: student teams will gradually build up a complete "contract book" including a mission statement, competitive analysis, patent review, product specifications, system architecture, economic analysis, development schedule, etc.  In the second half of the course, each team will be expected to implement its design and demonstrate a prototype of their product's core functionality.  At the end of the semester, a final written report will be submitted in the form of a utility patent.  Students are encouraged to take this course in conjunction with Electronic Design Lab (
ECE 520.448) in the Spring semester and leverage the groundwork developed here to enable production of a fully functional and marketable prototype by the end of the academic year. 


Project guidelines:

The primary guidelines for choosing a project are that it must require a non-trivial development and design effort, and that at least the core technology must be demonstrable within one semester's time.  Additionally, unless the team can find a faculty sponsor or pay out-of-pocket, the parts required to develop the initial prototype should not cost too much ($100 is good, $1000 is bad).  All hardware-based projects will be considered, but the lectures will not cover any technical material, so students are expected to have some background in the technology that they intend to implement (or be prepared to learn it on their own).  All projects will require approval by the course instructors. 


Grading:

The overall numerical course grade will be composed of the following elements:

Final demo
40%
Contract book
10%
Utility patent
15%
Weekly assignments
30%
Class participation
5%

Note that for team assignments, individual students' grades may be scaled up or down by peer assessments to encourage everyone to contribute equally. 


Midterm and final:

There will be no in-class midterm or final exam for this course. 


Textbooks:

Primary Text
Title:
Product Design and Development
Edition:
4th
Authors:
Karl T. Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger
Available at:
Amazon.com


Secondary Texts
Title:
Engineering Design: A Materials and Processing Approach
Edition:
3rd
Author:
George E. Dieter
Available at:
Amazon.com

Title:
Electronic Product Design
Edition:
1st
Authors:
Tony Ward and James Angus
Available at:
Amazon.com


Code of Ethics:

Everyone will be expected to obey the course's Code of Ethics. Please make sure that you read it and understand it. If you have any questions, contact the course insructors immediately.


Class schedule (tentative):

The course will usually meet once a week, on Tuesdays, from 4PM-7PM, for a lecture + discussion section.  Throughout the semester, we will occasionally hold supplemental sections on Thursdays from 5PM-6PM for
organizational functions or to cover additional material.  A tentative class schedule is listed below.

Day
Date
Course material
Assignments
Location
(Th)
September 4:
Course introduction

Barton 114
(T)
September 9:
Product development process and product planning
Opportunity statement
Barton 114
(T)
September 16:
Teamwork, group dynamics, and student product ideas
Mission statement
Barton 114
(T)
September 23:
Customer needs and target specifications
Customer needs and specs
Barton 114
(Th)
October 2:
Concept generation and TRIZ
Concept sketches
Barton 114
(T)
October 7:
Concept selection and preliminary costing
Concept selection matrices Barton 114
(Th)
October 9:
Intellectual property
Patent review Barton 114
(T)
October 14:
Concept testing and product architecture
Survey results, product architecture and final concept Barton 114
(T)
October 21:
Final concept presentations and project management
Bill of materials and schedule Barton 114
(T)
December 9:
Final presentations and course evaluations Prototype of core technology
Barton 22D

December 19:
NO CLASS - FINAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE
Utility patent and final contract book


Homework:

All homework assignments should be handed in electronically by emailing them to the course instructors before 4PM on the dates listed below. Late assignments will be penalized. If you know that you will be unable to complete an assignment in time, please let the course instructors know ASAP to avoid additional grade penalties.

Assignment
Subject
Due date
Examples
Homework 1    
Opportunity statement and product pitch    
Jung typology test
Monday, September 15, 2008
1, 2
Homework 2
Product mission statement
Monday, September 22, 2008
1, 2
Homework 3
Customer needs and target specifications
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
1, 2
Homework 4
Concept generation
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
1, 2
Homework 5
Patent review, preliminary costing, and concept selection
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
1, 2
Homework 6
Concept testing, product architecture, and final concept presentation
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c
Homework 7
BOM and timeline
Thursday, October 23, 2008 and Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Final assignment
Patent application
TBD
1, 2
Final assignment
Final contract book TBD
1, 2