2.9.13. Project Proposals

The proposal is the counterpart to the final report: ideally, it raises all the questions which the project might answer, even though more will be discovered during the process.

The primary review of the proposal will be verbal in-class commentary in order to provide the fastest possible approval. To speed this along, please provide in-class a one-page document which concisely summarizes the project plan. Please also submit a version of the document as a blog post to the 16-223 student site before the end of the day on which the proposal review occurs. Only one document need be submitted per group, but be sure to include the names of all contributors.

A good proposal will answer as many of the following questions as pertinent. These are prompts, not a checklist, so use your judgment as to how to formulate a brief proposal text or outline with supporting sketches.

1. What is your big idea, in a sentence or two? How does it address the museum context?
2. If you apply why-how laddering, can you identify an essential underlying question? What is the simplest abstraction of your idea?
3. Who is the audience? This might include user, viewers, or passive bystanders. What is the experience of the audience? What might they remember?
4. Are there existing projects you have referenced? Please include citations.
5. What will your proof-of-concept entail? Can you sketch it? Can you sketch the engineering elements (circuits, mechanical drawings)? Good drawings at this stage are invaluable, they can identify many potential problems much more efficiently than fabrication.
6. How do you propose to divide the tasks among the team? What roles will you each undertake and for which parts?
7. What features do you specifically propose to ignore? E.g., a project involving a wearable device could focus on sensing and actuation but choose to ignore battery operation in favor of a wired supply. In general, we’d prefer you keep your workload under control by emphasizing interesting behavior or interactivity over fit and finish.
8. What features do you specifically propose to test? How will we know if it worked?
9. What qualitative or quantitative metrics can we apply to gauge the success of the prototype?
10. How might the final project look? Can you sketch it?