Prototyping¶

Prototyping may have many meanings during the overall life cycle of a project. Often, "the prototype" is the goal for a team in that by the end of the semester they will have completed one or more prototypes of the device / system.

But long before that final prototype, multiple intermediate prototypes may be desired or required.

Consider this example. The team requires a force sensor and must determine whether a particular sensor will properly work in their project's application. It may be required to physically prototype a measurement setup to verify this. This setup might include the sensor, a mount for the sensor, and in the case of a force sensor, some sort of load for the sensor to measure.

After initial testing of this configuration the team may identify modifications to the sensor mount and create a second prototype. Testing using this configuration may suggest that a similar but different sensor would be a better choice. After making the necessary modifications and obtaining the new sensor a third prototype is built and tested. Assuming this configuration works as required it will be incorporated into the overall project prototype.

These are all prototypes! But they should not be confused with the project's final prototype(s).

The confusion sometimes arises when students consider their initial project descriptions. Typically these are written in one of two ways:

• that the team will deliver a prototypes
• that the team will deliver one or more prototypes

In the first case, it is clear that the end result will be a single prototype. The team may however, as shown in the example above, still need to construct many prototypes for testing of various aspects of the project. These may or may not be of value to the client and thus may become deliverable or disposable.

In the second case, it should be clear that at the end of the semester the team will be delivering multiple prototypes. It is often not clear at the start of the semester whether these should be final / complete prototypes, multiple versions of the same prototype as it is expanded / refined during the semester or if it makes sense to also deliver some of the intermediate prototypes that were developed for testing. The team simply needs to determine this while working with their Chief & Project Engineers in collaboration with the project client.