IHO2-RoyaPakzad
From IEOR 170 Spring 2007
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[edit] Problem Description
Getting assistance for your assignments during lab hours can be frustrated at times, especially, when the labs are crowded and there is a deficiency of GSIs and lab technicians to answer your questions. There have been times here at Berkeley’s labs where I had to raise my hand for minutes to get the attention of the assistants and yet they would go for the student sitting closer to them, simply because they never saw me raise my hand. This incident has happened a lot in one of the computer science labs at Berkeley, and I am pretty sure that could happen in any other labs as well.
Therefore I decided to design a device that would help make these lab hours more fruitful and useful for students and make the assistants’ job easier. There is no particular name for this digital device, however, if I were to name this tool, it would be MyHelpAlarm.
[edit] Target User Group
The target user group consists of students in any major who get their assignments done during lab hours and who often require help for there problems. This design is not only proposed for students here at Cal, it can be also helpful for other labs at other institutions or learning facilities.
[edit] Design Proposal and Design sketch
This product consists of a software program that needs to be installed on the associated computer and a rectangular LCD with a small cylindrical light bulb on top of it that will light up whenever the user asks for help. The LCD will also display “Help #” which indicates the order of the person who asked for assistant. The sketches below, demonstrate how the product looks like and how it works. As shown above, after installing the software on the computer, there will be a small icon on the lower-right corner of the screen named MyHelpAlarm. By double-clicking on that icon, you will be given many options to choose from, and also be able to see the status of the available assistant (whether he/she is currently busy or not). An interesting option will let you know about the problem that the assistant is discussing with another student and it will provide some helpful guidelines on how to start that particular problem, and this will be a very helpful, especially if the student is having difficulties on that exact problem. For cases in which several students ask for help at the same time, the student who turns on his/her help alarm first, will have the message “Help #1” displayed on the rectangular LCD. Once the assistance is done, the student has to turn off his/her help alarm. In this case, the student in the second order takes the first position and the “Help #2” on his/her LCD becomes “Help #1”.
[edit] Context and Forces
• The design of this product may not seem to be very straight forward at the beginning, but it is definitely possible.
• This product is specifically designed for learning facilities, technical institutions, Universities and therefore will not be available in stores or shops for personal applications. Moreover, this product is purchased by the organizations and institution mentioned above, and should be purchased directly from the manufacturing normally in large quantities. (Since the product is utilized in labs where there are many computers and many users working simultaneously).
• Utilizing this product does not require that much of an educational background, however a basic and preliminary knowledge about using computers and simple software programs.
- Individual Project Proposal - Roya Pakzad
