Design by Prototyping: Increasing Agility in Mechatronic Product Design through Prototyping Sprints

Abstract

AbstractThis paper adapts the agile scrum sprint, typically used in software development, to a prototyping sprint for mechatronic product design. The Design by Prototyping framework describes how the prototyping sprint can be used to manage the prototyping process in design projects through an agile-stage-gate hybrid model. A comparison of 18 student projects using either prototyping sprints or a traditional iterative prototyping approach shows that prototyping sprints helped students make more deliberate, strategic decisions about their use of prototypes.