Due: Sep 26 by 11:59pm
Weight: This assignment is worth 7% of your final grade.
Purpose: purpose
Assessment: Your proposal will be assessed using this rubric.
As a team, write a proposal defining the scope of your project plan. Your chosen project topic should follow the project selection guidelines.
The course instructor will review and grade your proposal and provide feedback in team meetings the week following the due date. If your proposal is approved, you are done and can move on towards the next project task. In some cases, the instructor may ask you to submit a revised proposal, most likely by focusing / adjusting the proposal scope. Follow the guidelines below to prepare your proposal.
Download and unzip this
template for your proposal. Open the proposal.Rproj
file and write your proposal in the proposal.Rmd file. The
template comes with some text and code explaining how to use it - you
should delete this code / text as it is only for explanatory purposes.
Be sure to adjust the content in the YAML:
title field (and
provide a subtitle if you wish, or delete the subtitle
field).author field, list the names of all teammates,
e.g. author: Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Han Solo.Your proposal should be written in a clear, concise, and
logically-structured manner so that a reader can easily understand the
ideas presented. The proposal should be proof-read before submission to
correct any grammatical or spelling errors. Spell checking can be
automated by installing the spelling package and running
this in the R console:
spelling::spell_check_files("proposal.Rmd")All figures should be referenced in the text.
Your proposal should contain the following items listed as separate sections.
NOTE: If your team is working on a policy project rather than a product, see the Policy Proposal Contents section below.
A few sentences summarizing the overall proposal and convincing the reader why it is important. Specifically, tell the reader:
Provide a brief description and background of the product or technology. Include a picture or diagram of the product.
If there are multiple potential markets, choose one to focus on for your analysis. Describe who you plan on taking your survey and how you intend to gain access to that population. You may survey customers of a “downstream” product, if appropriate (e.g. survey electric vehicle buyers to learn about preferences for electric vehicle battery attributes).
Which other products will compete with yours? Benchmark how competitors compare on your product’s attributes.
Estimate the size of the annual market (expected sales in units per year) for this product and its competitors. Specify if your estimated annual market size is regional, national, or global, and provide references.
A key component of your proposal is to identify the relationships between your product attributes and decision variables.
These are the product features that consumers observe and care about. For example, price is almost always an important product attribute that influences consumer choices. You should list and describe the major product attributes you will include in your analysis. Where possible, label the product attributes on the diagram of your design. Where possible, quantify the metrics for each attribute (e.g. if one of your attributes is weight, the metric could be “kilograms”). Also list the set or range of possible levels you plan to explore for each attribute (e.g. for color you may choose the set {red, green, blue}, or for price you may choose the range $1 - $10).
These are key elements of the product / technology that the designers focused on in designing the product. For example, engineers might be trying to choose the best thickness for a solar cell, which affects multiple product attributes, including weight (thicker cells are heavier), price (thicker cells use more material), lifetime (cell thickness may affect how quickly a cell degrades), etc. You should discuss ~2-3 key decision variables that are related to your product’s design that you propose to consider. Discuss why you chose these variables, and label them on your diagram of the product design. For each variable, specify units and the range of potential values under consideration.
Include a clearly legible image of your model relationships table identifying relationships between your product attributes and decision variables. For now, these relationships can simply be directional (e.g. cell thickness is positively related to cell weight). Use this example as a template.
List major outstanding questions (e.g. about the product / technology performance metrics, market opportunities, etc.) that you will need to know to conduct your analysis and how you propose to find answers. The purpose of this section is to identify high-priority items that you will need to know early on in your project.
Click the “knit” button to compile your proposal.Rmd
file into a html web page, then create a zip file of everything in your
R Project folder. Go to the “Assignment Submission” page on Blackboard
and submit your zip file under “Project: Proposal”. Only one
person from your team should submit the report.
For teams looking at a policy design rather than a product design, your proposal should contain the following sections.
A few sentences summarizing the overall proposal and convincing the reader why it is important. Specifically, tell the reader:
Provide a brief description and background of the problem you are trying to address and the goal of the policies you are considering.
Describe the target population for your analysis. Who will be affected by the policies you are considering? Who are you targeting these policies towards? Who are you planning on getting to take your survey, and how you intend to gain access to that population? Include an estimate of the size of the total target population.
Which policies are you considering, and what are some of the potential pros and cons of them? Are some easier / more feasible to implement or enforce than others? Are some more costly to implement than others? Include a summary table comparing some basic features of each policy, e.g.
| Policy | Description | Pro | Con |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policy 1 | Brief description | Easily implemented | Expensive |
| Policy 2 | Brief description | Hard to enforce | Cheap |
For each policy, identify the key attributes that your target population will observe. For example, if the policy involves a fee or tax, then the amount of that fee or tax would be a key attribute. For each attribute, specify the range of possible levels you plan to explore (e.g. for amount you may choose the range $1 - $10). You should choose levels that reflect the range of existing policies or potential policies. You may choose to include policies / attributes that have not yet been implemented as well.
List major outstanding questions that you will need to know to conduct your analysis and how you propose to find answers. The purpose of this section is to identify high-priority items that you will need to know early on in your project.