ME553 is a graduate-level product design course taught every Spring Semester at Purdue University School by Prof. Karthik Ramani, the Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Central to the course is a semester-long team project. Within the course project, students work in multi-functional teams to apply methods learned on a specific, team-chosen design project. This includes but is not necessarily limited to concept generation, product definition, prototyping and design verification. You can see examples of past projects by navigating through the website toolbar.
The course also includes an individual design assignment, in which students develop a solution to a given problem statement. Each student will maintain an individual design notebook on the Wiki. The teaching assistants and instructor will periodically inspect the design notebook. This course will allow engineers to learn the principles of innovative product design. We will draw upon current material and cases.
On-campus and off-campus project teams (consisting typically of 4 students) will choose a project from the opportunities generated by their teams. We will form the teams for both on-campus and off-campus students. The final deliverable of the project is a comprehensive product definition and specification with either (or both) a physical or digital prototype. The Wiki will be used for periodic evaluation during the conference calls. We plan to have one every three weeks starting from week the opportunity is chosen by the teams.