Emboldened by my previous success, I am again turning to RCM to help me with my homework...
For a user-oriented design class, we (myself and several team members) are investigating welders in commercial machine shops. As a result if you either are a shop welder or know some shop welders (particularly in the Boston area), we would love to hear from you, and talk ideally in person, but also by phone. This is not something that is meant to impose upon you or take up an unreasonable amount of your time - any input you are willing to give would be greatly appreciated.
The idea behind this part of the course/design process is to observe people in their "native habitats", and talk with them about their jobs. The eventual goal of all of this is to determine user requirements and come up with "innovative design ideas that would be well suited to people in your [welders'] situation". Given the pace of the course, it's unlikely that we'll construct a working prototype this semester; it's more of a blue foam kind of class. (We can continue to work on this material in future courses, though.)
We have more information, along with some legalese, available at
Eric Gallimore