Project Identification Phase

In this first module, the students will be introduced to the reciprocity of service-learning along with getting the students and the class acclimated to the engineering design process. The first module in the EPICS design process is understanding and identifying the needs within the community and beginning the process of identifying a project that will meet the needs of the community.

When a team is in this phase of the design process, they will determine the exact problem to be solved by the project. This means the following criteria must be determined:

  • The tasks to be accomplished – these are called project objectives.
  • The reasons for the project – these are called motivations.
  • What results, documents, or objects that will be produce at the end of the project- these are called outcomes and deliverables.
  • How long they want to spend on the project – this is called duration. Who is the representative for the community organization that is helping with the project– this person is the community partner contact.

Specification Development Phase

In this module, the students will be evaluating their initial idea of a project that will meet the needs of their community partners and will be developing specifications that will be used as a guide through this process. They develop an understanding of the users of the final product and under what conditions it will operate.

The team will analyze:

  • Who will use and benefit from the product – these people are called the users and beneficiaries.
  • When the users and beneficiaries present specifications– these are called customer requirements.
  • When the users and beneficiaries presents information to the designer concerning the function of the product including what the product looks like, how it works, what materials it can be built from, and how much it costs – these factors are called design constraints.
  • The guidelines already in existence listing engineering requirements referring to specific design, manufacturing, and safety rules for this kind of product – these guidelines are called engineering specifications.
  • How the final product will compare to other products readily available that do the job required – this is called a benchmark product comparison. What specific features and abilities of the product that have been determined, after other factors listed above have been considered – this is called determining design targets.

Conceptual Design Phase

In this phase, the teams evaluate the general design of their product, leaving the smaller details for the next phase.

In this phase, the students will:

  • Determine the smaller functions of their product in order to complete its overall task, and create a diagram that compares these functions.
    • For example, a team designing a bike fender might make the following functional decomposition diagram to show what smaller functions go into the fender’s overall function of protecting the rider from water and dirt off the wheel. The process of making this chart is called Functional Decomposition. Later in the design process, the students will dissect this process in more depth and detail.
  • Make a list of decisions to be made to determine how the product works and list the tasks in a sequence for an effective and efficient process.
  • Decide how the stakeholders will interact with the product. For example, will they talk to it, push buttons, manipulate it another way, simply look at it? How will they tell the product what to do? How will the user’s body fit on, around, or into the product?
  • Evaluate possible solutions for how the product will work in general, comparing them against each other to find positive and negative aspects of each one.
  • Choose the best solution from their potential options.

Detailed Design Phase

In the detailed design phase, teams will determine the smaller details of their product, now that they have determined the basics of the product.

They will need to:

  • Use the engineering specifications developed in phase two, to draw designs for every part of their product (and for the ways in which those parts will work together), starting with the simplest parts that need to be designed. Since this process uses specifications at the top of the functional decomposition chart to design starting with the functions at the bottom of the chart, it is called top-down specification/ bottom-up implementation.
  • Create a report that defends their design detailing how it will work and how the design constraints will be addressed. This report is called a proof-of-concept. Create a prototype, test the product and ask targeted stakeholders to used it and give feedback on how well it works.
  • Compile a detailed list of potential ways that the product could malfunction (these malfunctions are called design failures), and develop a list of solutions of how these failures can be prevented. The students will go through several iterations in this process, where they will cycle back through Phase 4, or even to Phase 3 until they are satisfied that all design failures have been addressed.
  • Later in the design process the students will learn advanced skill for determining possible failures, called Design Failure Mode Effects Analysis (DFMEA).
  • Determine the information that they stakeholders need to know in order to use the product.

Delivery Phase

In the final phase of the design process, teams will finalize all of the documentation for the project and prepare for a smooth delivery of the prototype. They will finalize the information from the Project Charter, Gantt Chart, the Specifications for the project, the decision matrices that were used to determine the design of the prototype. They will also include all of the testing data, the budget and materials list, the User’s Manual and of course the working prototype.