Class Improvements:
Give individual incentives, I feel that I’ve done more work than 70% of the class and they aren’t held responsible for being lazy or piggybacking. Client expectations were unclear, most of us thought we were supposed to come up with insane table additions such as the air filter, electric, etc. and deliver the actual product. I think everyone realized that was impossible right away and tuned out from the class. There’s no incentive to be a general manager of 40 students for this project and do more work than everyone else, so you (professor) should be the one to make big timeline decisions and hold others responsible. Ordering parts from an “invisible company” like PIH sucks, THERE WAS NO CATALOG! Don’t spend valuable class time talking about things like the design process, design paradigms, house of quality, just pick a design, assign roles, and get started. You should assign the deadlines, it’s not that we’re not capable of being managers, but I’m not getting payed to babysit a bunch of people.
As far as the HOQ’s were concerned, the theorists felt under-utilized because the HOQ’s were never actually used by any of the teams. The reason they were never used is because the only people that knew how to read the HOQ’s were the theorists. Theoretically, the theorists could show their team how to read it, but that doesn’t work because people get confused and have questions. Instead of asking the theorist, most of the people in the class would just start making things up because making things up is easier than trying to track down the theorist. If the HOQ is to be used, then everyone needs to know how to interpret the meaning of the HOQ. Additionally, although the HOQ was supposed to eliminate arbitrary decision-making, I do not think that they would have eliminated such decisions (even if they were used). I think this because the categories and characteristics put into the HOQ were arbitrarily chosen by the theorists. If the HOQ is really all that important, then an example should be gone over in class so that we can see how to eliminate the arbitrary decision-making.
Class expectations have changed drastically in the last two weeks. Just two weeks ago, the only deliverable required for the class was the 4 clean room tables. Now, on the Sunday before finals week, all of a sudden, there expectations for each team and each role group to deliver items from earlier in the semester that they may or may not have anymore. At the beginning of the semester all deliverables should be laid out so that important items are not discarded throughout the semester only to have you ask for them during finals week. This kind of list is found in literally every other syllabus I have ever seen.
Group Strengths:
Our group was on top of assignments and got them done early. Using slack to communicate for our group worked well. We reserved file locations to a google drive that kept our channel relatively orderly and made it easy to find information that was needed. This cannot be said for the rest of the slack channels that I was a part of.
Our group was responsive and timely, no complaints.
Insights for future benches:
Ditch quick-connects, they’re a terrible idea.