h"p://web.mit.edu/gordonelp

ESD.951 Engineering Innovation and Design

GELP Short Course Spring 2009

Joel Schindall and Blade Kotelly (with Chris Roby*)

*and a large number of volunteers (plus you, the students!)

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Satellite Phone Design

 A tale of two phones…

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Today’s Material

 Introduction, logistics, and motivation

  Compressed to 30 minutes so students applying to D-Lab can leave at 3:30

  Mostly lecture style, so please bear with it   Most of these concepts will be expanded on later

–  (two-pass assembler)

 Interactive lecture 1 (90 minutes)

  Student participation both invited and expected

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Course Logistics  Part of Bernard M. Gordon – MIT Engineering Leadership Program

  Info at http://web.mit.edu/gordonelp

 This is the pilot year   Includes about 15 Gordon Engineering Leader students (class of ‘10)

  Others from a variety of engineering departments (pilot limited to 40 total)

  Jr/Sr preferred, will be given in future years (spring term, higher enrollment)

 Project-based

  Individual projects, then teams of four doing student-selected project

  Projects based on design of speech-driven state machine that gets the job done (meets customer needs) and produces customer satisfaction

 How will students be selected?   Gordon program students are pre-enrolled

  Remainder will be selected based on e-mailed statement of “why interested”

 Time commitment

  6 units (2-2-2), meets MW 3-5 PM (possible alternate location after week 2)

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Why Are We Presenting this Course?  How many of you are in the School of Engineering?

– What do you think an “engineer” is?

 An Engineering education is about more than solving problem sets and acing exams

  How many of you know MIT's slogan [Mens et Manus]

  From the Sloan School website:

–  “At MIT, we believe that you must understand foundational topics at a deep level (mens) and be able to execute the practical application of these concepts (manus). The concept of mens et manus percolates through the MIT culture and inspires a shared ethic. It says: let's look at the problem, invent the solution, and do something about it.”

  Engineering no longer an applied art taught by practitioners (manus)

–  Technology breakthroughs created emphasis on engineering science

–  Unintended consequence: many faculty are researchers

–  Not bad, but important to reestablish balance between research and practice (as requested by ABET, industry, and graduate surveys)

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What’s In a Name?

 Engineering Innovation and Design

  Considered 33 names over four day period, such as

–  The art of engineering design

–  Way cool engineering design (wicked cool?)

–  The heart, mind, and soul of engineering design

–  Essential engineering

–  Zen and the art of engineering design (after one of my favorite books*) –  Beauty and the engineering designer (beast?)

–  Design that grocks (rocks?)

–  Just plain engineering

  Let’s take a closer look at the one we chose…

*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Engineering

 “So you wants to be an ENGINEER? What is engineering?”

– (Think of the courses you’re taking as we look at the definitions)

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 “So you wants to be an ENGINEER? What is engineering?”

– (Think of the courses you’re taking as we look at the definitions)

  The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems. [American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition]

  The art or science or making practical application of the knowledge of pure science, as physics or chemistry, as in the construction of engines, bridges, buildings, mines, ships, and chemical plants [Random House Unabridged]

  Engineering is the discipline and profession of applying technical and scientific knowledge and utilizing natural laws and physical resources in order to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective and meet specified criteria [Wikipedia]

Engineering

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Innovation

 “They are masters of INNOVATION”

  “The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. .... The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better.” [Wikipedia]

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Design

 “Apple produces wicked cool DESIGNS” (the “wow” factor, iPod vs Zune)

  “’To design’ refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, system, or component with intention....The final product can be anything from socks and jewellry to graphical user interfaces and charts. Even virtual concepts such as corporate identity and cultural traditions... are sometimes designed. More recently, processes (in general) have also been treated as products of design, giving new meaning to the term "process design”. [Wikipedia]

  Can design an iPod, or an algorithm, or a symphony, or a process, or a molecule…

–  Or a universe!!!

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The Challenge  Different kind of course. Many rules, but design, like leadership, is a skill

 Design goes far beyond the technical and process skills

  Process skills (left brain) –  Setting objectives, identifying customers, developing technologies, setting

goals, implementing test program, delivery and validation

  Intuitive skills (right brain)

–  Innovation, sense-making, active listening, lateral and associative thinking, creating goals from ambiguity, gut check, robustness

  Character and attitudinal learning (heart and muscle)

–  Making it happen [work] no mater what (design for failure), vision, empathy, creative dissatisfaction with status quo, ingenuity and resourcefulness

  “Soul”

 In my experience, 10% of engineers have “the magic” [circuit card example]

Almost a case of “you know it when you see it”*

  Consider the VCR…

*And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]

h-p://web.mit.edu/gordonelp