APSC 100 Module 1
Design Project Brief
September, 2021
Overview
In this project you will apply the design process towards a recommendation of a cardboard chair concept
for detailed development and testing. For this project, we are imagining you are an engineering team
responding to a design competition sponsored by a fictitious not-for-profit non-governmental
organization (NGO). Further, we are imagining the mission of the NGO is to identify and implement
low-cost solutions to enhance the quality of education around the world, and particularly in developing
countries. We imagine the NGO is holding this competition to identify an engineering team who they
will fund to complete the deployment of the chosen cardboard chair concept.
Although this project is intended to be more open-ended than those you have likely encountered so far
in your educational career, it is still quite constrained relative to problems you will encounter later in this
course or in the real world. The activities associated with the project will also force you to focus on the
earlier stages of the design process (stakeholder and needs assessment, concept generation, prototyping,
and initial concept selection)—the later stages will be covered in more detail later in the course.
The project will require three deliverables: a poster outlining your design process and final
recommendation, a short video pitch recommending your proposed concept, and a functioning
cardboard chair. The poster and video are intended to give you experience presenting your ideas,
delivering a persuasive recommendation, and justifying the decisions you have made.
Problem Statement
In many places around the world—for example, with semi-nomadic peoples such as within the Maasai
in Kenya and Tanzania—schoolchildren attend classes with limited seating or several students to a
bench. This project recognizes the potential opportunity for a lightweight, compactable school chair
made from sustainable materials (cardboard in this case) readily available at little to no cost. The final
chair design you will recommend is imagined to be an early prototype that can be refined before being
deployed to families, local tradespeople, or others to replicate and sell in areas where these Maasai live
and travel. Regardless of who builds and pays for the chair, it is expected to belong to the children and
move with the family as they travel.
Timeline
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Week 2 (Sept 13-17): Project planning; identify stakeholders and needs
Week 3 (Sept 20-24): Brainstorm solutions based on supplied scoring criteria
Week 4 (Sept 27 - Oct 1): Select and construct a functioning prototype of a final chair design
Week 5 (Oct 4-8): Demonstrate your chair and present your poster in studio; prepare your video
pitch*
Week 6 (Oct 11-15): Review and evaluate video pitches from other teams*
* note: Module 2 begins in Week 5 so some tasks above will occur in parallel with Module 2 tasks
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Resources
Each team will receive a single 4' × 4' (1.2 m × 1.2 m) sheet of corrugated cardboard for final chair
construction, and various sheets of cardstock and lightweight corrugated cardboard for building and
testing prototypes. You may use only cardboard for the functional elements of your chair: wood, tape,
adhesive, straps, and other materials are not permitted to be used in a structural or functional manner.
You may use materials other than cardboard towards the aesthetics of your chair, as long as those items
serve only an aesthetic function. Likewise, you may use string, twine, or other similar items to hold your
chair in its compact state (i.e., only during the Construction Assessment below). You must be able to
justify that any materials used for aesthetics and transportation are likely available to the Maasai.
Some basic cutting tools such as x-acto knives and scissors will be provided during studio sessions. Note
that you will need additional information (e.g. the appropriate size for a cardboard chair) beyond which
is outlined in this design brief. It will be your responsibility to conduct the research to obtain this
information, and be able to defend your choices during the chair and poster showcase at the end.
Remember that your own time is also a precious resource: using it inefficiently will force you to dedicate
more time to this project than is expected from the course. Following a formal design process will help
you ensure that your time is used effectively. While we encourage you to look broadly for inspiration,
the work should be your own – don’t just attempt to Google an answer!
Deliverables and Evaluation
Your recommended design concept will be evaluated in three ways: a functioning cardboard chair
prototype for testing, a poster, and a video pitch. The work you will do in your studio sessions will
directly contribute to these three deliverables, so keep digital or paper copies of your work for easy future
reference. The best way to minimize the work on your poster and video will be to do a thoughtful and
complete job during your studio sessions. Detailed guidelines, including complete information of what
is required, how to prepare it, and how it will be evaluated, can be found in separate documents on
Canvas for the poster and video pitch.
Chair Prototype
The assembled chair designs will be tested at a public design showcase in EDC 301 in your studio session
of Week 5. Evaluation will proceed in several stages:
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Transportation Assessment: We will first assess the suitability of your chair for transportation.
Starting with your chair in its fully assembled and functioning state, you will be timed on how
quickly you can collapse the chair to compact transportation state and suspend it by string from
a weighing hook. (You will need to supply a string to support the suspended chair, and you can
use that string to hold the chair in its collapsed state if you wish.) Scoring consideration will be
given to how compact you can make your chair, how quickly you can disassemble it, how light
it is, and whether pieces of the chair in its compacted state come loose when the chair is shaken
vigorously from the weighing hook (mimicking the movement of a caravan animal). You will
assemble your chair on a flat, dry surface intended to mimic the interior of a schoolhouse.
Physical Assessment: Evaluators will consider the aesthetics of your chair, and whether it is likely
to appeal to Maasai schoolchildren, parents, and elders. The dimensions of your assembled chair
will then be measured to ensure the size is appropriate for an 8-year-old Maasai child.
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Static Load Assessment: You will then load your chair with sandbags to assess whether it can
support 60 lbs. In this phase, you will load sandbags directly onto the seating surface of your
chair. Chairs which can support 60 lbs will then proceed to the Usability Assessment. After
Usability Assessment, your team will return to the Static Assessment to load as many 20 lb
sandbags as you wish to attempt, or your chair can hold. In this second phase of loading
sandbags, you will first place a loading platform (see the section at the end of this document) on
your chair and then load the sandbags on top of that.
Usability Assessment: Evaluators will sit on your chair and score it based on criteria relating to
usability and comfort for an 8-year-old Maasai child in a schoolhouse setting.
The full evaluation form, detailing exactly how scores will be calculated, will be released online at the
start of Week 3. Do not wait until the form is released to begin work though—the form is intended to
assess how well your design answers the needs of the end user, so you should have a pretty good idea
of which criteria will be evaluated once you have completed your own needs assessment in Week 2.
Poster
The imagined audience for the poster consists of engineers and other technical staff at the NGO. You can
assume this audience will have some decision-making authority for the overall project, and they will
decide whether or not your proposed solution has sufficient technical merit to be selected for further
development. They are very interested in understanding the process you followed, how you defined the
problem, and the technical aspects that support your final recommendation. More specifically, they will
be interested in the details of how you approached Stages 1 to 3 of the APSC 100 design process. As this
is a technical audience, it is expected you will include well-chosen technical details on your poster. At
the same time, aesthetics of your poster should not be ignored.
Video Pitch
The imagined audience for the video pitch will be non-technical staff at the same NGO, also with
decision-making authority. Your video pitch should include a full and appropriate description of the
problem as you defined it, a summary of the key features of your recommended solution, and a
compelling justification for your final proposed concept, showing it addresses the problem. All of this
should be done in a manner appropriate for a non-technical audience who will be judging the problem
definition, solution, and justifications of your proposed solution.
Impact on Your Course Grade
We are more concerned with the process you take to arrive at your recommendation than with the details
of your final recommended solution. Project grading will reflect this. This project contributes 10% to your
total course grade—4% coming from your poster, 4% coming from the assessment of your chair, and 2%
coming from your video pitch. See the chair evaluation form (coming in Week 3) and the poster and
video pitch documents for further grading details.
Loading Platform
In the second phase of loading sandbags, you will place a loading platform on the seating surface of your
chair and you will load sandbags onto this platform. The loading platform is meant to mimic a child
standing or jumping on your chair. It consists of a plywood surface, approximately 11”×17” (28 cm × 43
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cm), with two child-sized shoes mounted below. The width to the outside edges of the shoes is
approximately 10” (25 cm). See the photographs below for details.
Figure 1: Top and bottom oblique views of loading platform
~11”
Figure 2: Side view of loading platform
~17”
~10”
Figure 3: Front view of loading platform
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