Engineering, Business and Fine Arts students working together – EE 459/MKT 446/FA 402
Prof. Allan Weber (USC Viterbi School of Enfineering, Division of Engineering Education)
The Embedded Systems Design Laboratory (EE 459Lx) is a Capstone course intended for seniors in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, in which teams of engineering students participate in a product development process by working with teams of students from other departments at USC (Marketing and Fine Arts) to produce a prototype of a marketable product.
The EE 459Lx students provide the engineering expertise to design and build a hardware/software project utilizing one or more embedded processors. The goal is to expose students to the process of developing a new product and to provide an experience very similar to what an engineer would have at any company where they would work to produce a product that not only works but that customers will want to buy.
Goal
The goal of the class is to encourage communication and cooperation between students from different schools and to approximate the experience the student might encounter if employed as a design engineer. Most engineering students know very little or nothing about marketing the products they help create, while marketing students usually lack valuable insight in product design and development. A successful product requires both engineering and marketing, and good communication and cooperation between the groups.
Cross-functional Product Development Teams
The teams of EE459Lx engineers collaborate with teams of students from two other classes at USC: Marketing 446 (Practicum in New Product Development) and Fine Arts 402 (Advanced Design Projects). The Marketing 446 student teams will perform market research and analysis to determine design requirements for a marketable products. The FA 402 students work on the physical design of the product and its packaging. The engineering, marketing and design teams work together throughout the semester to develop a final product that not only operates as specified from a technical standpoint, but also incorporates the features that make it a marketable product.
Course description
During the semester, the teams are required to:
- Design the system using CAD tools or on paper
- Make an oral presentation to the instructor and class on their proposed design, including a project timeline and cost estimate
- Determine what parts will be required and select vendors
- Construct the project in the EE 459Lx lab
- Debug the project and get it working
- Demonstrate their project to the instructor and the their peers
- Perform and oral presentation in front of the class on the details of their project
- Submit a written report, including circuit diagrams, software listings and a detailed analysis of the cost of manufacturing the project in large quantities
The class strongly emphasizes the importance of teamwork and communication between the students as a necessary aspect of the project.
Past Courses
Spring 2008 Course Feedback
(class co-taught by Viterbi School's Alan Weber and Marshall School's Therese Wilbur)
In Spring 2008 the EE 459L class incorporated a significant change in the class curriculum over previous semesters. With the goal of giving the students a more complete view of the process of developing a marketable product, each engineering team was paired up with a team of marketing students from the USC Marshal School of Business.
Due to differences in the class sizes, there were ten engineering teams and five marketing teams. This resulted in each marketing team being associated with two engineering teams and working on two different designs of the product. The joint student teams were responsible for the development of the class product.
Teams met weekly to discuss the product and exchange information. During the meetings, members brainstormed over what features could be implemented and whether they should be incorporated into the product. The final product was the result of both teams working together to come up with a working and marketable product.
Product specifications
- Individual alarm times for each day of the week. Since student schedules are usually not identical from Monday through Friday, this clock would have ability to program in different wake-up times for each day. This is not a new idea and there are some clocks on the market with this ability
- Programmable times for an alert tone go off. These could be used to remind the user that it is time to go to class
- Alarm and alert times are stored in non-volatile memory so that they are retained if the power is lost. This would prevent a customer from having to re-enter several different alarm and alert times after a power outage
- Battery backup for the clock to keep it running through any power outages
