What are 2.009 and 2.00b?

2.009 teaches students the fundamentals of product design and teamwork. 20 person teams must ideate, model, and test to create a full alpha prototype for a massive final product launch. The team process is very structured, with set milestones, deliverables, presentations, and downselects; but the product ideas, prototypes, and final deliverable are all their own.

Each year the class has a different theme to guide ideation, and in 2018 that was "Danger". When I took the class, I predominantly developed electronics for a "Super" product that coordinated search and rescue parties. You can see that project here.

2.00b is a smaller scale version of the same class taught to freshman and focusing around developing design fundamentals in pursuit of a ideating and developing toy product prototypes in small groups.

My Involvement

Working on these classes were so demanding that each staff member had to work long hours and wear many hats to get everything done. Day to day I also helped film students and lectures, mount posters, edit video projects, and prepare class materials. However the thing I was most proud of and my mentorship of student projects and teams. I was the go-to TA for general technical or electronics help, questions, and troubleshooting. Some of the major projects I helped with were a collapsible speedbump, a LED disco ball toy, and a wireless dance mat system. Here’s some links to the product team I mentored and the toys I helped with.

How it Happens…

2.009 is renown among MIT classes for its wonderfully over-the-top production value: everyday lectures have custom graphics, rehearsed skits, and team-building activities in addition to multiple large-scale events held throughout the term. To this end, the class is staffed by a professor and five TAs who handle all the event planning, filming, photography, video production, and website updates, in addition to standard lecture preparation and helping the students.

Media work

Previous years, course staff used a series of physical drives and backup drives. At the beginning of the term i had to find reference files from last year and realized previous years had no consistent file structure and files were impossible to find.

To improve that I built and maintained a media server with twice the capacity for this years expected file output, created a chronological file system and media tree, and wrote sync scripts that automatically backed up to the server when files were ready on drives. The media server utilized 10 gigabit ethernet to speed up large file transfers. In total we took 8TB of video and 4TB of photos. Additionally, we switched video editing programs to Final Cut Pro X, which is much better at managing, organizing, and tagging large amounts of external files. Future semesters should find this system highly useful and our files easy to find.