Generating ideas, pitching a project proposal, assembling a design team, and creating a development plan are vital skills that enable engineers to establish new projects. This unit takes you through the creative process of prototyping in consultation with stakeholders. Your team must enhance your design idea by seeking external input through continued stakeholder interactions and sharing of several functional prototypes. You will pitch and demonstrate your final design to an audience of peers and professional engineers. You will apply relevant fundamental discipline knowledge and skills, as well as, project management principles. Completing this unit will enable you to discover your creativity while honing skills exhibited by productive and innovative engineers.

Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.

Feedback from SUTE

The assignment templated was great and saved a lot of time.

The word templates should continue to be available for student use.

Feedback from SUTE

It wasn't clear whether a physical prototype is to be built or not.

We do require some evidence of prototyping. Acceptable prototypes include a reduced-scale physical prototype, computer-aided drawing, 3D printed prototypes, etc. These acceptable types should be discussed better with students.

Feedback from SUTE

Distant learning can be challenging during group work.

The cloud-based project management tool, Asana, was introduced for efficient communication among group members. More focus on how this tool can help distant students communicate and work together should be discussed in class.

Feedback from SUTE

More help is needed for the final assessment.

An additional lecture should be planned to focus on the requirements of the final assessment.