Project Partner Visit Guidelines

In either week two or three of the semester, depending on which is more convenient for the Project Partner (PP), your team will visit their PP's site with a goal of developing an understanding for what their day-to-day activities are like. Students should not be concerned at this point with talking about the details of their project, or with demonstrating what parts of the project already exist, but rather should aim to learn as much as possible about the needs of the PP or its users.

Students should pay extremely close attention to the following, as applicable:

• Workspaces of the users
• Tools used
• Characteristics of PP's users
• Technical expertise of users or anyone expected to use or maintain a delivered project (as applicable to team's project(s))
• Social context of the PP, including their operating budget, workplace culture and attitudes, religious affiliations, for-profit or non-profit status, ultimate goals of the PP's organization, etc. 

The Project Partner visit is intended make the teams and the project partners familiar with each other in order to facilitate a better design process. Teams will have an opportunity in week four to demonstrate or present their prototypes with their project partners. At that meeting teams should be able to describe how their prototype(s) address the specific needs of the project partner (or how they don't, but will).  

We will be happy to provide parking passes for your partner to visit campus. It is wise to ask the project partner how they would like to proceed. Some are unfamiliar with navigating Purdue and don’t want to try to locate the parking facility and others are quite comfortable with Purdue.

Please coordinate with Robin Terwilliger if your project partner will need a pass.