CSCI 28
Solution Design: from Ideas to Implementation Winter 2019

Cross-listed ECON 28
This is not the current course catalog

Designing a pair of computerized glasses is not enough. Who will use them, and what problems will they solve? How can you be certain someone will adopt your new technology before you spend millions of dollars building it? Google Glass and other wearable technologies have struggled to answer these questions. In fact, somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of large IT projects fail and all too often, the cause has little to do with the quality of technical engineering. Innovators often solve the wrong problem, misidentify the users of the software, or fail to adapt to evolving requirements. The challenge is that engineers–and Williams students–like to be told what problem they are to solve, but the average consumer is terrible at knowing what they want until they see how the new product will work. Solution design offers a powerful framework for resolving this paradox efficiently. We will examine how to visualize interactions between market forces, corporate directives, and engineering requirements, and how to apply design thinking to generate novel ideas within these constraints. Then, we will interrogate the strength of our ideas by asking author Marty Kagan’s questions: is it feasible? is it valuable? will someone use it? and does it have business viability? Readings by Steve Blank and Eric Reis emphasize the importance of low-cost, rapid prototyping/experimentation and statistical analysis thereof that results in actionable development goals. Finally, we will introduce topics in human computer interaction, and organization tools for complex technical collaborations like Git and the Getting Things Done methodology for task management. Throughout the course, small teams will deploy this toolkit against problems of the students’ choosing. One team may wish to design a new app for the WSO website. Another team may choose to interview a local organization and design a technology powered tool that can improve its operations. You are the innovator. Small teams of students will each execute one iteration of design and prepare a plan for developing a technological solution to a problem of their choosing. The contents of the plans may include: careful descriptions of the product’s goals, stakeholders, target users, assumptions, and constraints; a business plan; sketches of a user interface; first steps in programming an application; write ups of experiments intended to test underlying assumptions; and a direction for future development efforts. Adjunct Instructor Bio: Allan Wellenstein is a senior vice-president at DataArt, a global technology consulting firm and the head of their Solution Design consulting practice. Allan has over 15 years of experience helping some of the world largest companies design and implement massive technology transformations. Though technically headquartered in New York City, he lives with his wife and three children in Pittsfield, MA.