| Summary: | Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2018. === Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. === Includes bibliographical references (page 35). === MIT's undergraduate mechanical engineering capstone class titled 2.009: The product Engineering Process introduces students to the process and tools used by designers to successfully design a product. One of the main skills introduced to students is prototyping as a means of learning about and communicating a product vision. Early stage prototypes, called "sketch models" in 2.009, are made and used in the concept selection phase to explore and validate the design teams concepts. At this point students are new to the design process and unsure of how to develop physical models that are not merely physical representation of their concepts but also tools for exploring, answering design questions and validating a concept. To help students arrive at more effective sketch models this framework has been developed to outline a set of actionable steps that allow students to apply key concepts in the design process to their sketch models. The first portion of the framework focuses on guiding students to arriving at a useful and strategic learning objective for the sketch model. Students are first guided to consider four main areas of concern for concept validation: market, feasibility, scope and customer need in order to target major areas of uncertainty in their concept. To focus on questions that directly relate to a physical model, the next level of consideration focuses on appearance, user experience and functionality of the concept. Lastly, students use the criteria of uncertainty, criticalness to concept validation, and learning potential to prioritize questions for the current design phase. The second portion of the framework suggest the use of examples of other sketch models with similar learning objectives to demonstrate how models have answered similar questions to those that the design team has proposed. Grouped by their physical area of exploration and categorization as "looks like" or "works like" models, a set of examples will conceptually demonstrate how to make their sketch models effective in answering similar design questions. === by Emma Pearl Willmer-Shiles. === S.B.
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