Posted: September 13th, 2017

Product Archeology: engineering term papers

Product Archaeology: Engineering term papers

Appliances from the 2000’s
Objective: Your archaeology team from the future is tasked with better understanding life and
culture of the 2000’s through studying artifacts—objects created by people. You will conduct
background research, dissect a product, mathematically and scientifically model one function of
the product, develop the lifecycle of your product, understand the manufacturing involved in the
product, and redesign your product for a family currently living in Japan.

Click here to order this paper

Procedure:
Assemble a multidisciplinary team (see descriptions below). Publish your findings on a website
using primarily blog posts. All team member must write a blog discussing the archaeology
project from their disciplinary perspective.
Background:
Product archaeology is “the process of reconstructing the lifecycle of a product – the customer
requirements, design specifications, and manufacturing processes used to produce it – to
understand the decisions that led to its development. Product archaeology provides an
opportunity to study not only the manufacturing (i.e., economic) issues of a product, but also the
global and societal context that influenced its development. It also provides a context for
studying the environmental impact of a product by considering, for example, the energy and
material usage throughout the life cycle of the product (i.e., cradle to grave). Your goal is to
place yourself in the minds of the original designers and in the time frame during which a
specific product was developed to try to re-create the global and local conditions that led to its
development.” (See links to supplemental reading on Blackboard for more information)
Product archaeology involves the following steps:
1. Preparation: Investigate product lifecycle, conduct product research, and plan the
dissection process
2. Excavation: Dissect the product, reverse engineer the product, list all parts of the product
(include any subassemblies), model parts or subassemblies of the product, describe the
function of the parts, describe how the product works, reassemble the product, and record
the process through video
3. Evaluation: Benchmark other products and conduct experiments to model a part of your
product.
4. Explanation: Draw conclusions based on gathered evidence
egr201
Team Roles
Each team member will be assigned a role with a particular area of expertise. Your job is to put
yourself in the shoes of these individual roles to better inform the project from an
interdisciplinary perspective.
Environmentalist
You are a 63-year-old woman/man who has been living in this city since you were a child. You
love nature and are committed to the environment. You identify strongly with the ‘hippie’
culture and were a strong supporter of civil rights and camped out during the Occupy Phoenix
movement. You are really concerned about our consumerism culture and want future engineers
to think about what they build and how these products will impact the environment. Your role is
to challenge the team to think about how their product will contribute to environmental
degradation and if the product is even needed at all.
Designer
You are a 38-year-old designer and feel that you can learn many things about society and culture
by looking at products that were developed by that society. You insist that all of your ideas are
right and you are not very flexible in your thinking. Your pet peeve is when designers refuse to
think about the people that will produce and use the product. You always are very user-centered
and are very talented at designing products that people will love using.
Physicist
You are a 35-year-old physicist and more than one of your friends have compared you to
Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. You are disappointed at the level of math and science used
in design projects to optimize their designs. You love finding mathematical representations that
very closely model the behavior of products and pride yourself on how well you can predict
behaviors with theoretical models.
Cultural Anthropologist focused on contemporary Japan
You are a 35-year-old mother/father of two young children and a professor at Arizona State
University. You and your spouse moved to Mesa 5 years ago from Japan and since then have
started a family. You feel like many design teams do not think about the needs for people outside
of their primary culture. If you are designing something, why not think about how this could be
used to improve people’s lives in other parts of the world, like Japan. You really wish every
ASU student would engage in a program like Engineers Without Borders so that they can begin
to understand the similarities and differences in cultures throughout the world.
Machinist (only use this role if you have 5 people on your team)
You are a 50-year-old machinist working in Mesa. You do not have an engineering degree, but
are very confident in your expertise as you have been working as a machinist for over 30 years.
You can look at any product and instantly know how it was manufactured and assembled. You
always have ideas about how products could be improved and the many different options of how
products could be manufactured.
egr201
Team and Individual Assignments
! Website
Create a TEAM website with blog posts focused on your product (final website due
October 27th before class – TEAM). There are many sites that offer free websites/blogs.
Free options include wordpress.com, blogger.com, wix.com, and weebly.com. Include at
least the following pages:
1. Home page that introduces your product (due October 15th before class –
TEAM)
2. How it works page that includes 2D CAD drawings (each individual must draw a
different component) (due October 15th before class – INDIVIDUAL), parts list
and function descriptions (due October 15th before class – TEAM) and a video
from your excavation/reassembly (due October 27th before class – TEAM).
Note: Drawings can be created in any drafting software (SolidWorks, AutoCAD,
Google Sketchup), but must be exported as an image so that it is viewable on the
website and cannot be hand drawn.
3. About Us page that introduces each team member. Include a rich description of
your character. This can be done using a photo and text for each person or a video
for each person. You are encouraged to embellish the characters that are provided
and to create rich characters with lots of depth (due October 15th before class –
INDIVIDUAL).
4. Blog Posts written by each team member (create page on website before class
October 15th; add blog posts before class October 20th – INDIVIDUAL). All
members must write at least one blog post (see below for details and deadline).
Team members must also revise and be familiar with all blog posts from the team.
Create blog posts that would appeal to a wide audience. Using visuals in addition
to text will help create a more interesting and appealing set of blog posts.
Consider the following questions when writing your blog posts.
Environmentalist: Lifecycle assessment of your product (cradle to grave),
consider material and energy in life cycle, consider other ways to provide this
service—is there a better way? What is the environmental impact of your
machine? What are the energy and material uses of your machine? What
impact do these materials have on the environment? Is it more or less to buy
your finished product already processed (where possible)? What are the
energy and material usage over the life cycle of the product? When the
machine is at the end of its life, can any part of it be recycled, reused, or
remanufactured?
Designer: In your blog post focused on design include design specifications
including when the product was designed and who designed the product.
Recreate the global and local conditions that led to its development. What
were the customer requirements? What does this product say about the people
that bought it? How much does it cost to use your product once? Include
costs for materials as well in this calculation. What are added features or
functionalities of this type of machine? How do these features and
functionalities impact the cost of designs? What does the cost of the product
egr201
say about the larger society? Benchmark this design with other similar
products.
Physicist: How was science used in the design of your product? Theoretically
model a function of your product using math or science. What assumptions
are made in this model? How close is the model to actual functioning of the
product? At a minimum you must model parts of the appliance using an
engineering drawing (hand or CAD) and mathematically or scientifically
model behavior within your product.
Anthropologist: Redesign your product for a family in Japan. You decide to
redesign the product for a family in Japan. You focus your attention on the
specific needs of an imagined family in Japan and how these are different or
similar to your own family.
Machinist: How was this product made? What were the manufacturing
processes? At the end of life can any parts be recycled, reused, or
remanufactured? What is the impact of the manufacturing processes on the
environment? What are the costs associated with manufacturing? Could this
product be manufactured so that it is a higher quality product? Why wasn’t it?
Design Documentation due October 22nd before the start of class
A record of your team decisions, i.e. choices and changes, must be organized and labeled in a
shared Google Doc (Note: The document should be shared with all team members, your
instructor, and TA before October 8th in class). A link to the Google Doc should be posted on
Blackboard before the due date.) At the top of your document include a link to your website.
ALL TEAM MEMBERS must contribute to this Google Doc (you will receive zero credit if
you provide zero information to the document).
Presentation in class October 22nd
Each team will present their projects to the class in 5-minute presentations. Teams may use
PowerPoint, Keynote, or Prezi, but are limited to 5 slides (submit slides on Blackboard before
class on October 22nd – TEAM). The presentation should focus on why the product exists. Be
concise, simple, and informative concerning the product. All aspects of the project will not be
able to be covered, so teams must decide on the story they will tell during their presentation and
what and how aspects of this story should be included. ALL TEAM MEMBERS must
participate in the presentation to receive credit.
Communication Mock-up due in class October 22nd
Create a communication mock-up, i.e. low-resolution prototype, and include a visual (photo or
video) of this on your website. Address the following on your website:
• Global: Is your product common in Japan? If not, are their some equivalent
products? If not, what are some reasons that it is not common in Japan?
• Societal: What impact has your industry had on society in Japan? Is this similar
to the US? How do cultural and societal differences in the US and Japan drive the
design of your machine?
Your mock-up should be made out of found materials such as cardboard, foam board, pipe
cleaners, aluminum foil, tape, trash, etc. Use your communication mock-up as a visual for your
presentation.
egr201
Expert/Stakeholder Review via Role Playing due October 29th before class
The presentations will be videoed and posted to VoiceThread. VoiceThread for our course can be
accessed through the Blackboard link provided under the Submissions folder. Each team will be
assigned another presentation and will be required to ask questions and make comments about
the presentation in their identified team role (environmentalist, designer, physicist, cultural
anthropologist, or machinist). You will make a 2 minute audio or video comment using the
VoiceThread link provided under the Submissions folder on Blackboard (do not use text only).
See the “VoiceThread” video tutorial in the