Incorporating design into a

class teaching technical

communication skills

Dr Lisa Shatz
Suffolk University
CDIO Conference, June 2009
Technical Writing

 Component in most engineering

curriculum
 Teaches
 Basics of good technical writing
 Clarity, conciseness, forthrightness, precision,
transitioning between ideas
 Reports
 Proposals
 Manuals
 Memos
 Resumes
Assignments?

 Assignments are wide open

 Creativity for science and engineering
learning
 Plagiarize-proof
 No strong need for lectures
 Writing is mainly learned from
 Practice
 Feedback
 Classroom time
 Team meetings
 Experiments
Incorporating Design into
Technical Writing Course
 Team-based design contest incorporated into
the curriculum
 Suffolk U.’s Business School’s“New Product
Innovation Competition”:
 Proposals due in early October
 Award Ceremony in November
 Contacts with businesses and ventures
capitalists such as Bose, Data Solutions F5,
M/C Venture Partners
 3 Cash Prizes $3500, $1000, $500
 240 proposals in 2008
How did it work?

 Head of the contest, Dr. Sushil Bhatia,

came to talk to class at our 2nd meeting
 Teams meet twice a week for four
weeks (2.5 hrs/week)
 Assignments
 Journal assignments for each meeting
 Design contest entry (proposal)
 Presentation
Team assignment
 The team picks a leader
 Responsible for overall quality
 Time management
 Team member
 Responsible for some part of the design
 Needs to let the instructor know
responsibility
 Each team member receives 2 grades:
 Individual grade
 Team grade.
Journal Assignment

 “Your journal entries for your design product

should be about one page long (12 pt font;
double spacing).
 In them you should describe what you
accomplished during your team meetings, and
what future work you plan.
 Concerns or problems should be discussed too.
 The journal entries must be written with good
English, in a clear and concise manner.
 You should write a separate journal entry, for
each team meeting (2 per week).
 Sketches can be added on too.
 Each individual must write his own journal entry.”
New Product Innovation Competition Submission Form
2008
For questions, please contact: Sushil Bhatia : [email protected]
Product Name: ______________________________________________
Innovator’s Contact Information: (PLEASE PRINT or TYPE)
Your Name
Address
Phone
Submitter’s signature

Please provide similar information for other team members (if any) below.
Innovative New Product Concept
Product Name and Product Description:

Product Name:
Briefly describe (25 words or less) what the product is:

Product Origin:
How did you come up with this idea? Briefly describe.

Patents:
Would you like to know more about patent and other methods of protecting your new product
idea?

Value Proposition:
Product Sale Price:

Describe your product’s primary function as clearly as possible.

What does it do? How does it do it?

Describe the principal applications of this product.

List all other applications for which your product can be used.
Feasibility
Briefly describe “what will it take to launch the product”.

Cover the risks and rewards of implementation and execution. (Production,

marketing, sales etc.)

Summary:
State in layman’s terms why you feel your product will be a success in the market.

Why is it important to have this product?

What benefits will it provide?

Product Name: Kronos Healthlink
Part of sample entry (won 2nd prize)
Briefly describe (25 words or less) what the product is:

Revolutionary Health Monitoring Device that performs basic health

information gathering for immediate analysis by the user’s
diagnostician.
Describe your product’s primary function as clearly as possible.
What does it do? How does it do it?

The Kronos Healthlink is capable of:

- Monitoring blood pressure

- Monitoring heart rate
- Monitoring body temperature
- Monitoring environmental temperature
- Determining the user’s current state of activity: either exercising, walking, jogging, or
jumping
- Transferring securely the user’s information to his doctor’s server or a hospital server.
- Intercommunicating with the user’s cell phone.
To achieve these functions the watch will have an advanced array of sensors and a user-friendly GUI
(Graphic User Interface) with touch screen calibrated OS. This will give the user full access to the
information being recorded.

To monitor heart rate we will make use of common standards by using a sensor that can sense slight
changes of pressure throughout the median antibrachial vein. Furthermore the blood pressure can be
determined in a similar way via the use of an inflating coating located at the inner belt that holds the
watch to the wrist.

Temperature can be determined using thermistors (Resistor that varies with temperature); one
located under the watch itself and the second one located at the top of the watch.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology will allow the device to communicate with the hospital server, and all
information will be sent with robust data encryption.

Furthermore, with the use of an accelerometer, and proper configuration, the watch will determine
via the vigorous arm movement, whether the user is exercising or simply walking.

The accelerometer will also play a big part in the power management system as it will turn the touch
screen “on”, only when the user holds the watch horizontally to ground, thus saving power as much
as it can via this sensing capability.

Moreover the watch will be powered by a rechargeable battery and will be able to charge using a
dock set and “on-the-go” (I’m not sure what “on-the-go” refers to) via its solar panel coating.
 Part of Sample entry (won 2nd prize)

Signal Processing and Information management.

The sensors register the different types of signals collected from the body and the
environment.

Then all the collected signals are passed through band pass filters.

These filters reduce the “signal- to- noise” ratio and then send the analog information to a
digital converter.

Once the information is digitized a programmable microcontroller will further process the
information and will display this information at the touch screen.

The programmable microcontroller will also send the information to the WiFi chip
for immediate data transmission.
Part of Sample entry (won 2nd prize)
Feedback on Design Contest
 “The design contest was an amazing way to bring
together the class to work towards a project that could
be very helpful for future generations. This competition
also helped the engineering students match up to the
business schools students. This competition was fun
and exciting as it made us all think of various new
technology that some had only thought of as a dream
that would someday take shape to reality. The team
work was awesome and helped us know each others
potentials and specialties. The journals helped boost
our grades and were a great way to keep track of ever
step of progress towards our design.”
 “The design contest was a great real life experience.
We teamed up to go through a design process of a new
product. The meeting reports were a good decision that
kept track of what we were doing. Required a lot of
research, which was great to get us familiar with new
technology. Overall great task.”
 The design contest was a learning experience for me
because I have never participated in such context. The
good thing about it is that the context taught me how
to be creative. Working on a team gave me the
importance of being a team player. Two things I would
change is the way they organized the proposal form, I
think the contestant should have the freedom of writing
it on our own format, and the instructor could also have
the class compete among themselves.
 Feedback on Design Contest (cont.)
 “The design contest brought team-work experience to the
whole team. It has taught us what it's like to be in the real
world where we have to come up with a design, prototype,
and revision. Not everything were given to us; we had to
research on our own and bring it up during our group
meeting. Working in groups has it advantages where we all
can come up with different solutions and pick the best one
out of all. A disadvantage is we have all have different
schedule therefore it is hard for us to meet outside of class
time. I find it hard to contact other people because some of
the member never reply to email or answer phone calls. I
would recommend the instructor to have students work
individually in the future. Student can come up with their own
projects but they can seek each other for help on revision or
new idea. This is fair for the rest of the students because
each student can come up with their original idea and do
their own work. Another recommendation is that the
instructor should aid us more on the design and give us
feedback.”
 Feedback on Design Contest (cont.)
 “I think that we did not have enough time to provide a
well studied design product. Indeed there was a lot of
theoretical assumption as part of the feasibility of the
whole project. The good point was the chance to think
about innovation and the experience of a team work. I
think our team worked well together and this is an
experience worth doing.”
 “Team work is very hard to accomplish unless a good
leader is in the group. Sometimes the group leader does
not have the energy and time to lead. Furthermore, a
randomly picked group by the instructor adds to the
problem of leadership. Thus, in order to save time and
headache is better to have individual project.
Another issue is time; I don't think that 3 weeks is
enough time to summit a good proposal. Designing a
good picture or diagram of the product takes time. The
goal is to win the competition; hence a well elaborated
proposal can accomplish this goal, and a good proposal
takes time to put together.”
 “The design contest was overall a good experience. It
provided a good way to practice journal entries.
However I wish that there was a little more structure,
maybe to share the design with the class before writing
the proposal. Our team worked together great, no
problems at all.”
 Other Assignments
-Design of Experiment
 “You are to design your own experiment (it can be
based on an experiment you performed in another class, but
it must have an original idea from you in it), present it to the
class, and do a write-up similar to Experiment 1 write-up .
 You need to perform the experiment BEFORE class so that
your presentation will go smoothly.
 Your in class presentation should NOT illustrate your entire
results, only one or two results should be shown.
 Your presentation should follow the format of Presentation.
The conclusions you discuss will be based on your results
form your experiment PRIOR to class.
 Be sure to clearly state what your hypothesis is, and
indicate predictions based on a theoretical analysis.
 Show how your measurements compare to your
predictions. ”
Other Assignments

 Summarize alumni Dan Harvey talk about working in

industry (Canon Design)
 Resumes after talk by MIT Lincoln Lab group leader
Mike Shatz
 Instruction manual
 Problems with plagiarism
 Ethics in Space Shuttle Challenger Engineers’ Decisions
 Presentation on a current topic in science and
technology
 Weekly readings in text book "The Craft of Scientific
Writing", 3rd Edition, Michael Alley, ISBN 0-387-94766-3