Assignment 9

More Complete Opportunities and Ideas

Assigned: Session 12

Due: Session 13

Develop three of your opportunity statements further. Refine your statements so that they are more complete and stated at a consistent level of generality.

Provide evidence from what you have learned about demining to support each statement. This evidence may come from situations in the accident database, from comments you saw on the demining mailing lists or from something you learned on the trip. Evidence is important to justify further work and to avoid working on projects simply because they seem clever or easy or different.

Develop five more-complete ideas out of your raw ideas from the last assignment. These ideas must correspond to your three opportunity statements. Many of your raw ideas are incomplete. Expand them or combine them to make more complete ideas. Decide on the major components or subsystems of each idea. For each idea determine who the users would be and the context in which it would be used.

Create a sketch for each of the five ideas with an evocative title, name and date placed above it and notes to the bottom or the side. Use plenty of arrows and labels to indicate the major components and actions or motions of the ideas.

Put one sketch per page. Leave the other side blank. Each sketch with title and description should not be smaller than half of an 8.5x11in page. Each of the sketches should be at the same level of detail. You should not have one sketch that is very detailed and others without detail. Your sketches should be neat and clean. This is a common format used by designers to communicate ideas.

Give each idea a succinct title that is descriptive. For example, one idea could be titled "jackknife" because its configuration is analogous to that of a common pocketknife. If possible, the words should evoke the image or idea of the configuration in a reader's mind. Place at most one to two sentences of clarifying notes below or to the side of the sketch.

There are several common problems with idea sketches to avoid. Small idea sketches are difficult to read and understand (thumbnails are different and are intentionally small). Light line weights also make a sketch hard to read. Use medium and heavy line weights together instead. Only go over lines multiple times when you intended the effect. Avoid erasing. If a sketch has problems you can solve them by tracing it onto another piece of paper correcting it in the process. Don't leave off the title, name, date, arrows and labels.

Submit this assignment by emailing your opportunity statements to Ben. Bring your five pages of ideas to class to hand in.