2.3 Taking responsibility for your own learning Not much of this unit conforms to the traditional pattern I mentioned earlier – the theory-example-exercise pattern. In particular, you will find you are expected to discover much of it for yourself. Why is this? This is a legitimate question and deserves a full answer. One year, a student at a residential summer school complained I had not taught him properly. I was, he told me, an expert and so why did I not demonstrate how to tackle the problem he was working on and pass my expertise on
18.2.2 Compatibility An innovation that is compatible with the experiences, values and needs of its potential buyers will be adopted more rapidly than one that isn't compatible. For example mobile phones have spread rapidly because they are compatible with social and cultural trends towards faster communications, increased personal mobility and the desirability of high-tech gadgets. However the car seat belt, patented in 1903, wasn't adopted on any significant scale until the 1970s (Author(s):
Introduction This unit aims to provide an understanding of invention, design, innovation and diffusion as ongoing processes with a range of factors affecting success at each stage. You will gain an understanding of the factors that motivate individuals and organisations to invent, and the creative process by which individuals come up with ideas for new inventions and designs, and you will gain an understanding of the obstacles that have to be overcome to bring an invention to market and the factors that i
Module team Andy Lane, course team chair and author (1999) Karen Shipp, course team chair (2002) Rosalind Armson, author and critical reader Jake Chapman, author Eion Farmer, author and critical reader John Hamwee, author John Martin, author Laurence Newman, course manager Wendy Fisher, author John Hudson, author Graham Paton, author Roberts, author Christine Bla
The T552 course team
Acknowledgements All materials included in this unit are derived from content originated at the Open University. Andy Capp cartoon: “The Boss wants us at the ground early” © Mirrorpix
1.3.1 Systems thinking and concept Much can be said about systems thinking. However it is worth reiterating some key points here as they are central to understanding the purpose of the diagrams discussed later in this section. The word system is one that is in regular everyday use. People talk, for example, about ‘the social security system’ and the ‘telephone system’. Gamblers boast about ‘having a system’ for winning at roulette. Young people talk about being ‘against the system’. The trouble with
1.2.8 Working with other people's diagrams – reading diagrams Reading diagrams is an equally useful skill to that of drawing diagrams. Not only does it help you understand what other people are trying to convey, it also helps you be critical of the diagrams you draw yourself. In some cases diagrams are used to make the text look pretty or appealing and do not add to the understanding of the reader (hopefully not the case with the diagrams here!). Even when they are used more effectively there is a need to be critical of what information is being conveye
12.1.1 Survey questionnaires Questionnaires are lists of questions that enable information to be gathered efficiently from a relatively large number of respondents. Most questionnaires require a fixed type of response, such as a choice between available answers, or along a scale of response. For example, a product design questionnaire might suggest, ‘I found the product easy to use’ and provide a five-point scale of response from ‘agree strongly’ to ‘disagree strongly’. Or a question might be, ‘how often do
9.1 User trip This section introduces a simple method of investigating product use. Even such simple methods can provide useful information to guide product redesign and new product development. The essential idea of user trips is simple: you just take a ‘trip’ through the whole process of using a particular product or system, making yourself a critical observant user. The only way to learn how to make these user trips is to try one or two for yourself. You will be surprised how much you fi
8.1.2 Feedback A second important principle is providing feedback to the user – for example, when you press a button it moves and clicks, or you hear some other sound or you see a light to indicate the action has been registered by the machine. Here's another short video clip from Phillip Joe at IDEO, this time on feedback. 5.1 Introduction Water for public supply can be obtained from underground sources by wells sunk into aquifers, or from surface sources such as purpose-built reservoirs or lakes (collecting rainwater run-off or water from streams) and rivers. The safety of the water is of utmost concern – several million people die each year after consuming contaminated water. The primary aim in water treatment is the elimination of any pathogenic micro-organisms present. All the above-mentioned sources can be subject to pol 2.5 Corrosion processes: galvanic series A similar concept to the electrochemical series that has been used by engineers for many years is the galvanic series (one example of which is shown in Table 2: here the list should be read down the columns rather than across the rows). It ranks metals and alloys in order of reactivity or 2.4 Corrosion processes: galvanic corrosion When two dissimilar metals are in contact, or in close proximity with a conducting fluid in between, an electrochemical cell can be formed that leads to the more reactive metal becoming an anode and the less reactive metal a cathode. This kind of corrosion is known as galvanic corrosion. It is not uncommon, since metals are often coated with others of different E0, and different metals are often in close contact with a common electrolyte. One of the earlie 2.3 Corrosion processes For many materials, degradation processes are simply one or a series of chemical reactions that act to erode or deteriorate the material. The deterioration of metals is a little more complex than that of non-metals because metals are electrical conductors. Local
electrochemical cells freq 1.3 Environmental factors I indicated earlier that many failures occur after a product has been in service for some time: such as the wear of a car tyre, or corrosion of the car body itself. It is also possible for components to fail because of a combination of a manufacturing defect with the applied loading or with the environmental conditions during use. Author(s): 5.3 Scholarly definitions of religion Scholars offer us many different definitions of religion, but these definitions tend to be of two types. The first type is known as a substantive definition: that is, a definition that tells us what kind of thing religion is by pointing to its distinguishing characteristic – usually its beliefs and/or practices. We can find an example of a substantive definition of religion in my summary of the definitions found in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Think again about d. Acc 5.2 The ‘answer’ in your dictionary Please now look at the definition of ‘religion’ given in your dictionary. Do you think that the definition is going to help you when deciding what is or is not religion? Please give 3.4 The mass production of death Mass shootings by soldiers and Einsatzgruppen and the use of the mobile gas vans took time and energy. There was concern about the effects on the morale of the men involved. Towards the end of 1941, even before the Wannsee Conference, the Nazis had begun building camps in Poland that incorporated large gas chambers for the mass production of death. Belzec was the first to come into operation in February 1942, killing people with carbon monoxide first released from bottles and subsequen 4.1 Why was our immortality an issue? When reading about Hume's death you may have been puzzled as to why people became so worked up about Hume's attitude. The question of what, if anything, happens after death is something most of us are at least curious about, just as most of us are curious to know what we will be doing in a few years’ time. But curiosity cannot explain the venom evident in the condemnations of Hume. The reason for the hostility can be approached by considering the opera Don Giovanni. The opera i 5.1 Revolutionary calendar and metric system We considered earlier the universalist principles of 1789 deriving from the Enlightenment that inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the redivision of France into departments. As the dominant group in the Convention by 1793, the Jacobins regarded themselves as mandated to enact the ‘general will’ of the people in a sense inspired by Rousseau: not as the aggregate weight of the individual aspirations of 28 million Frenchmen, but as the expression of that which, as virtuous men
Exercise 9
