Assignment 5: "Future as System" Technical Plan
Assigned: November 19, 2025
DUE: December 06, 2025 at 11:59PM Midnight
Overview
As you plan for Future as System, your final Systems Studio/Lab, take a moment to reflect on the skills we've developed and clarify your technical plan going forward. This is an opportunity both for you to formalize your project plans and for me to understand how to best support your final project development in the last two weeks of class.
For this assignment, write up a short (600-800 word) document explaining your project, with an emphasis on the technologies you intend to use. Write your document in markdown format. Feel free to include links to external pages or images that support your description.
Contents
Begin your document with a 1-2 sentence summary of your concept. Then address the following questions:
- What are the technical materials that comprise your project?
- If your project is web-based or software-based: How will you be hosting it and what libraries, languages, and technologies will you incorporate?
- If your project is a physical object: What materials will you be using to fabricate it? What electrical or computer components are you using?
- If your project is speculative: What technologies (real or fictional) are you imagining for your project? How might they be documented, and what resources would be available for their use?
- How do these technical choices support your concept?
- What materials are you expecting to include in the final submission of your project?
- If your project has a form other than a website or source code, I'm expecting technical documentation of some sort (e.g. a bill of materials, technical drawings, circuit diagrams, a user manual or so on). What form do you expect your technical documentation to take?
- What topics would be helpful for us to discuss in support of your project? This can be either new topics or any material from earlier in the semester that you'd like to review.
Requirements
Your technical plan should meet the following requirements:
- Be presented as a markdown (
.md) document 600-800 words long. Use appropriate formatting (section headings, bullets, code blocks, etc). - Embed any supplementary materials as images or hyperlinks.
- Images can either be embedded as URLs on the internet or may be submitted as files along with your technical plan.
- Include a brief description of your project concept.
- Address the questions above in more detail.
Submission Instructions
Write your technical plan as a markdown document and submit it via Canvas. If you have any additional images, submit them as a Zip file containing your document and images. Otherwise, you can just submit the document.
NOTE: Because the goal of this assignment is to direct your final project development and give me information about what topics to cover in class, the deadline for this assignment is pretty strict. Any assignments turned in more than 24 hours late will receive half credit! Plan ahead, and please reach out if there are any issues.