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project management ideation leadership innovation user interface (ui) budgeting market segmentation machiningThe UTEP Engineering Innovation and Leadership (E-Lead) 9-month Capstone Senior Design Project is a much deeper project than a typical senior capstone. Our E-Lead teams will work on significant projects for an industry sponsor for their full senior year. The projects are in the category of what we’d call “Class II” for a company: not your critical path projects, but projects that have good potential upside if only you had the time or people available to look into them, such as product enhancements, manufacturing challenges, user interface improvements, possible new products that need exploration, etc.
The project is modeled after the “SCOPE" Senior Design Teams at Olin College in Boston. As a result, the processes implemented within E-Lead Senior teams can have a substantial impact. E-Lead Senior Design entails a significant commitment from the students (a full-year course with substantial internal and external deliverables), from the sponsor (a liaison to interact with the team), and from UTEP’s E-Lead program (a strong structure in place to support the teams; each team has a faculty advisor, bi-weekly design reviews, project management training, workspace, budgets to purchase materials, full use of the machine shop and support, etc.).
For an example of past projects, please visit here.
Senior Design is divided into two semesters: fall and spring. During the fall semester, students must perform a significant amount of Ideation work to help explore possible and varied solutions to the problem. This ideation time may also include discussing customer needs and helping define the customer segmentation space. This time also provides our students with weekly interactive time for in-depth discussions with their industry mentor.
At the conclusion of the fall semester, in concert with the agreement of the company mentor, the student team will converge on a design idea. That idea will be taken forward into the spring semester for students to work on developing the design and making a working prototype.
Keep in mind that while the only promised deliverable to the company will be a detailed report, we will push hard to deliver a working prototype.
Project timeline
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August 26, 2024Experience start
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September 6, 2024SCRUM Backlog Draft
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September 12, 2024Sprint Review 1
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September 26, 2024Sprint Review 2
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October 2, 2024Interim report submission 1
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October 10, 2024Sprint Review 3
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May 15, 2025Experience end
Timeline
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August 26, 2024Experience start
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September 6, 2024SCRUM Backlog Draft
Upload draft for scrum report here.
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September 12, 2024Sprint Review 1
Sprint Review: Hello students, please submit your SCRUM backlog, Sprint Presentations, and Sprint Status Reports. Any additional material will be requested in class.
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September 26, 2024Sprint Review 2
Sprint Review: Hello students, please submit your SCRUM backlog, Sprint Presentations, and Sprint Status Reports. Any additional material will be requested in class.
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October 2, 2024Interim report submission 1
Sections 2, 3a, and 3b are due. Submit as a Word document. Note that the deadline is noon to submit the interim report.
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October 10, 2024Sprint Review 3
Sprint Review: Hello students, please submit your SCRUM backlog, Sprint Presentations, and Sprint Status Reports. Any additional material will be requested in class.
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October 24, 2024Sprint Review 4
Sprint Review: Hello students, please submit your SCRUM backlog, Sprint Presentations, and Sprint Status Reports. Any additional material will be requested in class.
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October 30, 2024Interim report submission 2
Sections 3c, 3d, and 4 are due. Interim report should be submitted as a Word document that includes the portions of the report already submitted (revised as needed). Note that the deadline is noon to submit the interim report.
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November 7, 2024Sprint Review 5
Sprint Review: Hello students, please submit your SCRUM backlog, Sprint Presentations, and Sprint Status Reports. Any additional material will be requested in class.
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November 21, 2024Sprint Review 6
Sprint Review: Hello students, please submit your SCRUM backlog, Sprint Presentations, and Sprint Status Reports. Any additional material will be requested in class.
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December 5, 2024Sprint Review 7
Sprint Review: Hello students, please submit your SCRUM backlog, Sprint Presentations, and Sprint Status Reports. Any additional material will be requested in class.
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December 7, 2024Decision on Design Idea
At the conclusion of the fall semester, in concert with the agreement by the company mentor, the student team will converge on a design idea. That idea will be taken forward into the spring semester for students to work on developing the design and make a working prototype.
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December 12, 2024Final Presentation
Date subject to change.
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May 15, 2025Experience end
Project Examples
The IDEAL E-Lead projects has three components, not necessarily in equal amounts:
* Technical Design of Product or Process (a MUST)
* Customer Need Discovery (Customer hasn’t or at least doesn’t fully know what they want or desire in the outcome/constraints)
* Economic Constraints that impact the design and MUST impact the outcome and design.
Proposed projects should not be so well-defined or narrow in scope that they leave no space for students to perform ideation work. At the same time, students need a defined scope of work with particular outcomes that the mentor desires to fulfill. The idea is to maintain the balance of an important project to the company while also requiring some ideation work.
Companies must answer the following questions to submit a match request to this experience:
Can you provide a brief overview of the project and its objectives?
Have you been on our website and check the former student projects linked in the description?
Does your project have economic constraints?
Does your project have have a Business to Consumer (B2C) element?
Would you be able to visit the UTEP campus during the prototype exhibition?