1 - Project
Investigation
2 - Writing a
Design Brief
3 - Doing
Analysis
5 - Creating
Design Ideas
4 - Writing a
Specification
6 - Finding
Out More
Project Investigation

Choosing an idea for your project involves research. It will be important to find out as much as you can about the people who might be likely to use your finished product and what would be useful to them. You will need to use this information when you start designing your product.

Take a look at the links on the left to help you get started. It may be useful to open a "word" file to complete any of the questions/activities.

 

The Design Brief

Before you can write the Design Brief you need to produce some conclusions from your last bit of research. Please answer the following questions:

- What kind of people are going to use and benefit from your product?

- Where and when will they be using it?

- Now write your Design Brief. It should be a short clear statement of what you want to do. It might start: I am going to design and make a ....for....

- Say how many products might be required as this will affect your method of manufacture. For example would you expect your product to sell in millions?

Analysis

It's now time to do some careful thinking and look at the problem you are trying to solve. You could perhaps do some extra research from books, the internet, or other sources at your school.

This analysis should consider:

What your product will do, What weight and size it might be, Whether it uses battery power, How it can be maintained, What safety considerations are important, What the maximum cost should be and the total number of units to be made, What environment the product will need to work in and Ergonomic factors that make it easy and comfortable to use.
Can you think of more?

Specification

Your design specification is very important: it says which aspects of the design are fixed and those things that may be altered. It will later on be a check list that you will look at when you test and evaluate your finished product. You can then see if it has met all the requirements that you originally set out.

For example it might state the maximum allowable weight and size of the product. It might specify the colour of the materials used: for instance, "It must be blue".These are all fixed statements. If you want to leave it more open you might say "The colours are not important" and then you have more choice when you start designing.

Now write your specification as a list of design requirements that you have identified from your previous research and analysis.

Generate Design Ideas

"OnTrack" will let you design your electronic system. You should be familiar with Project Tools library of subsystems to do this.

OnTrack allows you to produce a 5-stage block diagram and from this automatically generates an electronic circuit, pcb mask and parts list allowing you to make a working circuit. Look at the subsystems available and think how you could use these building blocks to help develop your design solution.

 

 

Finding out more

By clicking on "SubSystem Info" (top right) you will find many more useful links helping you to understand how Project Tools' subsystems work.

The example projects in this section provide a good starting point from where you can using the To do this click on "Project Tools" at the top left of the screen..

 

Design
Considerations
(click for details)