1. System Design - EE321X Civilizations and Cultures Reflective Essay Topic: C&C Essay Synthesis Name: Matthew Hodapp Date: 2/22/15 Help Received: Class, Col. Barr

2. Functional/Physical Matrix - Product EE 321X Civilizations and Cultures Essay
Functions \/
Students / Teams
IT resources:
computers/printers/software / Internet
Preston Lib/ Barracks Study Rm/NE427
Angel/ ePortfolio/
VMI Writing Center
Identify various cultural products, practices, influencing system design X
Identify activities and assignments in the course that facilitated your learning about cultural factors influencing design
Select most distinctive feature of cultural influence on systems design.
ID course activities and assignments informing and shaping cultural understanding
Integrate artifacts supporting analysis showing how you came to understand the distinctive CFs influencing systems design.
Compose a draft essay
Receive draft essay feedback/write final draft
Post/Publish Essay/Artifacts using Template for ePortfolio Reflective Essay
Identify various cultural products, practices, influencing system
Identify activities and assignments in the course have facilitated your learning about cultural factors influencing design
Select most distinctive feature of the culture(s) influencing systems design. May be more that one, or may a distinctive factor that changes over time. Remember that what makes a culture distinctive may be something that it has in common with another culture, or it may be something that makes it different than others.
Identify which factors stand out as significant in your mind, and why
Using the distinctive factor(s), identify the course activities and assignments (that you’ve collected as artifacts) which have informed and shaped your understanding of the culture(s) in this particular way. Consider these experiences in relation to one another.
Integrate artifacts supporting an analysis showing how you came to understand the distinctive CFs influencing systems design.
Express in a paragraph what you want to say in the essay, and why it’s worth saying.
Get feedback on your paragraph
Compose initial draft of your essay.
Review drafts – provide feedback as team exercise/writing center
Post essay/artifacts
Publish essay/artifacts by mid-semester

3. C&C essay paragraph
In my paper I will be reflecting on the change of culture due to technology, more specifically cellphone etiquette in Japan, smart car development in Saudi Arabia, and app-based transportation in America. How the development of smart technology for these different cultures will be explored further. For example how cellphone use in Japan differs from the vast majority of places in the world, or how smart cars are seen as the solution to a conflict in Saudi Arabia where women are not allowed to drive themselves, or how the Uber transportation system is changing transportation in cities. These specific aspects and how companies attack these different cultures from a marketing and a usability standpoint will be examined. The different technologies that affect these cultures are unique in their own way and engineering has adapted to suit the needs of these different cultures in order to sell more product. The needs of each of these cultures come from different situations, i.e. religious, prideful, or a need for things at a fast pace.

4. A Reflective Essay - Cultural factors influencing Systems Design
In my systems design course I learned that language is a distinctive cultural factor that influences the global support of products designed by engineers. Research revealed that to cover the target markets for affordable, globally distributed products that support documentation should be available in English, Spanish and Chinese.
Language allows effective global communications about engineering products. Its distinctive nature requires a match between the target user of the product and the language they speak. Engineering support products, due to practical constrains, like cost and schedule, do not allow product support in all languages. So …..
I learned about how to identify distinctive cultural factors that influenced design by applying the systems engineering process that consists of four steps. The first is requirement analysis ….. Functional analysis and allocation……Synthesis and Testing. My first artifact consisted of gathering all requirements for the C&C components for writing a reflective essay and evaluating them to determine their influence on the assignment. This step also required that my team compose a statement that conceptually summarized the task at hand. The next artifact …. Next describe FAA, then Synthesis and finally Testing.
In the synthesis s step our team had to make a list of all the requirements of writing a reflective essay and match them with resources available to compete the task. It was at this stage that I realized my essay would have to focus on three distinctive factors for which I had materials that would support a high rubric score on the essay.
The course activities and assignments that were most informing and that helped shape my cultural understanding of design influences were collecting research on the topic, selecting criteria to evaluate the quality of the essay, developing and weighing alternatives for the essay and finally figuring out how my essay would be formulated on the basis of the resources available. Doing the research showed me many options and our teams rated the materials allowing me to quickly focus on ones that were most relevant systems design. It was when I looked at the alternative for completing this assignment that I realized I had to choose a topic where there was enough material for three distinctive cultural factors that would “present a complex, insightful analysis of a selection of substantive, varied, and revealing artifacts which fully support(ed) and develop(ed) (my) essay’s thesis/focus.” (Revised C&C Rubric) It was then that I realized a user’s manual I’d found on line was written in three languages, that languages are distinctive cultural factors and that I could express in a meaningful way the relationship between what I learned and how I came to learn it though my collected artifacts.
I learned that systems engineering process (SEP) is a logical way think through a complex task and insure that it is completed successfully. In this case, I used SEP artifacts to identify distinctive cultural factors influencing design and composed an essay that I hope can be rated high using the scoring rubric. The SEP also made me aware that the influence of my work in this course extends beyond the classroom, since these essays also satisfy requirements imposed by the existence of VMI’s e-Portfolio system.
Sources: VMI Angel Course Management System, "Revised C&C Rubric”, VMI, Web. 21 February <
Use MLA style:

5. Synthesis – C&C
Using your Functional Analysis/Allocation work, design a Functional/Physical Matrix for completing the C&C essay portion of EE321X. Review the consolidated Research Survey and express in a paragraph ( words) how you will critically analyze three distinctive cultural components/practices that influence system design using supportive artifacts. Include at least three MLA formatted references that support your theme. Submit individually using the Synthesis - C&C Essay Assignment Template to EE321X dropbox, title it the C&C Essay Synthesis_Your_Name and show any Help Received.