Week 2 Tutorial: Minimal Machines Workshop

Taking a vending machine transaction apart into its smallest decision points, in groups

1 March 2027

Before the tutorial

Nothing to prepare — this week’s machine is provided in the room, or you use your phone to pull up a photo of one you’ve used.

In the tutorial

Groups teardown a vending-machine transaction into its individual decision points: read the options, choose, pay, wait, retrieve, recover from a jam. “Simple” machines turn out to hide as many silent decision points as complicated ones — this week is about learning to see them.

Afterwards

Keep your group’s teardown format; you’ll reuse the same decomposition method on a machine of your own choosing for Assignment 1.

Who benefits when the design is bad?

The spec

What you bring to the tutorial. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

  • your group names the vending machine (or equivalent coin/card machine) it studied
  • the teardown lists every decision point a user has to make, in order
  • you can name the smallest point where the machine could have told you more and didn't

Teaching team