Define Your Problem

Defining the problem is, according to my friends who are professional engineers, a step that too many engineering students fail to take seriously enough. This is the step in which you figure out what you're trying to accomplish, why it is worth your effort, and what resources are available. If you fail to define your problem properly, you will inevitably waste resources and fall short on meeting your customer's requirements. Do that in class, and your grade will suffer. Do that as an engineer on the job and expect a rebuke from your boss or, worse, loss of your job.

To work through the process of defining our problem, we're going to start with an exercise based on a non-real problem: a Zombie Apocalypse! We're using a non-real problem so that I can emphasize the engineering process rather than engineering concepts or scientific content. For the rest of this year we are going to work through a number of engineering concepts and scientific content, but before we do that I need you to be rock-solid on your application of the engineering design process.