Fitness for purpose

I used to be a science teacher. My favourite start of year activity was to get students to make paper boxes to boil water in. You can read more about this here, here and here. You would think that it would be hopeless to put a paper container of water onto a tripod over a bunsen burner but it works.

"Fitness for purpose" fits here - you would not expect paper to be a good material to put onto a fire unless you expect it to burn.

In your project, you need to explain how your conceptual design would be fit for the purpose that you are working on. It means: "Will it do the job it was designed to do according to the requirements of the brief?"

Viability

As part of your evaluation, you need to discuss the viability of the proposed solution.

"The viability of the conceptual design refers to the capacity to meet the specifications of the brief, address possible social and environmental impact(s), meet likely future demand, and address availability of resources for its maintenance."

Here is an example of a technology student discussing the viability of their project.

Are the items in the pictures viable?

Colour - where to from here?

I have a personal desire to explore and work with colours.

I have a set of questions that I want to explore:

• How do colours affect emotions?
• Why is combining light different from combining paint?
• How can colours be described?
• How can colours of nature be represented in manmade environments?
• Are the rules of colour use the same for different contexts?
• Different media, different techniques, different rules?

And some more philosophical ones:

• How can hunger for colour be satisfied?
• What does a simulation of nature lack?
• What is it about sky blue, sun yellow and pear tree green that is magic?
• How will I know when I have finished?
• Can I study colour using blue biro on white paper, or black type on a white background?

And some more websites:

• Natural Selections

Next steps:

1. to look at Color Theory Lesson 1 - done 28/3/10
2. to find the colour scheme website I used with COM201 in 2008
3. to look at Color Theory Lesson 2

Specifications

Your refined brief needs to

• include specifications
• show evidence of consultation with stakeholders
• show the results of your key factor research and prioritisation.

A SPECIFICATION is measurable and describes what the solution will be, or look like, or behave, or do. Each key factor should be investigated and researched to develop a specification.

When you have printed your refined brief, you could hand-write on the page where each specification came from.

Here is an example:

My husband and I are planning a 90th birthday party for my father-in-law. As part of the event, we will have a slideshow of photos of Les's life. Key factors for the slideshow include:

• content
• length
• presentation style

Key factor research tells us that "three minutes is a long stretch for time-based media. The infomercials you see on late-night TV are often three minutes long, and they feel repetitive and endless" (quoted fromMediapedia by Kit Laybourne).

This suggests an attribute: the presentation should be short.

This then becomes a specification: the presentation should be three minutes long.

Legal and Ethical Issues

In any technology project you need to consider legal and ethical issues.
Legal issues are to do with the law.
Ethical issues are to do with right and wrong.
Ethical issues are things that people argue passionately about.
Actions can be legal but not ethical.
Actions can also be - defended as - ethical but not legal.
Sometimes what is legal is also open to argument.
An interesting recent example from the media is the case of the Waihopai Spy Base trial, where the peace protestors claimed that what they did was to prevent suffering and was therefore not illegal.

You MUST include legal and ethical issues somewhere in your project - either your key factors or your codes of practice would be sensible. And you will need to talk about these issue again in yuor evaluation.

Consultation

You can think of a technology project as the story of a relationship:

• Alex meets Sam


• Alex likes Sam


• Alex finds out more about Sam


• Alex does things to make Sam happy


• Sam feels flattered


• Alex does something dumb


• Sam is sad


• Alex talks to Sam's friends


• Alex does more things to make Sam happy


• Alex and Sam ride off into the sunset together.

You are Alex. Your client/main stakeholder is Sam. Your other stakeholders are Sam's friends. Consultation is about finding out how to make Sam want to be with you!

Writing your Refined Brief

To write your refined brief you need to:

1. Have evidence of consultation of stakeholders to help you
2. Write one (or more) specification for each of your key factors
3. Make sure each specification is measurable.

School Policy Documents

The school's policy documents for websites are now available in iNet -> DigiTech -> Ms Fahy -> DTM201.

Codes of Practice

Some points to consider here:

• Check last year's post explaining what a code of practice is.
• Remember that you need to provide evidence of how you have "followed the rules" in your code(s) of practice.

Areas that seem important to me are

• Privacy
• Copyright
• Appropriate language and use
• Teacher professional standards.

Sources of information include:

• Teacher Union guidelines for Web 2 safety for teachers
• Netsafe considerations for blogging and Web 2 in schools
• The use policy of whichever Web 2 tool you decide to use (Blogger, Facebook, Bebo...)
• School ploicy on our web presence - am trying to track this down and will let you know when I have found it.
  

What is a conceptual design?

A concept is a general idea. A conceptual design is a description of something that could be made. If you search Google images for "conceptual design" you will see two types of images:

• pictures of objects (either real or imaginary)
• diagrams of systems (eitehr existing or planned)

Your conceptual design might be shown to the client by any of these methods that suit your issue:

• a scale model
• a set of sketches
• a storyboard
• a sample with limited functionality
• an unpublished set of computer files
• a multimedia presentation

Key Factors

Once you have chosen your issue you need to start working on key factors for a successful solution.
Previous posts on this blog give some information.
You might also like to look at this poster which lists a set of key factors that may help you.
Key factors may be added to as the consultation process progresses.
What you need to do with them is

• list them
• explain their implications
• prioritise them
• explain their priorities
• discuss the interactions between them
• use them to write specifications for your refined brief

Blake Pictures

You can find some recent photos of Blake house on atheletics day by going to iNet -> DigiTech -> Ms Fahy -> DTM201.

Here is a copy of the Blake page from last year's Lymphad, which Mr Tuaine referred to when he visited us.

Note that uploading a 2 MB photo is not necessary or a good idea. You can resize your photos by using Photoshop or Paint (Stretch/Skew).

Journalling

Keeping a journal is an important part of following the tech process.
Things that you should include are:

• what you do each day
• what your next step is
• what consultation you have done
• what changes you make to your plans/brief/Gantt chart
• what problems you encounter and how you overcome them.

To record this information you could

• make a table in Word with each row dated
• use Excel to do the dates automatically and make columns for each of the above points
• use a blog to provide evidence that you have posted every day rather than inventing it all at the end.

Gantt Charts

There are different ways of making Gantt charts, but the basic idea is to show all the tasks you need to do by the deadline and plan how much time each one will take. Excel is good software to use for a Gantt chart because it starts off as a table format and it allows dates to be entered quickly and efficiently. You should include

• milestones - these are big steps on the way to the goal with target dates


• resources - what things (hardware, software and other stuff) you will need for each step.

Here is an example - but you can do better!

It is hard to show the resources on the same sheet of paper. You may wish to copy your final task list onto another worksheet and show the resources needed on a separate page.