Assignment 1: Midterm Diagnostic

A written diagnosis of one week 1 case study (or your own package), backed by at least two real frameworks from weeks 2-5

Due: 2 April 2027 · Weight: 40%

This is the diagnostic exercise week 6’s lecture and Midterm Workshop lab walked you through, written up properly and marked. It’s the same task — pick a subject, apply real frameworks to it, name the logic it optimises for — but here the standard is a calculation or a specific applied critique, not a plausible-sounding paragraph.

The brief#

Diagnose which of week 1’s three design logics your subject actually optimises for, and prove it with at least two real numbers or a real critique from weeks 2-5 — not a description of what the packaging looks like.

Pick one subject: Apple, lululemon/Patagonia, or OnTheList from week 1, or your own week 1 teardown package if you’d rather work from something you physically measured. Whichever you choose, the diagnosis has to survive contact with at least two of: a real flute/board identification and its cost implication (week 2), a real cubic-weight calculation against that subject’s actual or estimated dimensions (week 4), or a genuine publisher-interest critique of a sustainability claim it makes, if it makes one (week 5). A diagnosis that only restates week 1’s description of the case in different words, without running a number or a critique against it, hasn’t done the assignment.

State your conclusion plainly — which logic, and why — before you show your working. The reader should know your answer in the first sentence and your evidence in the rest of the page.

What you submit#

A written diagnosis, 600-1000 words, as a single Markdown or PDF file. Show your working for any calculation (the dimensions or estimates you used, the formula, the result) rather than just stating a final number — a number without its working can’t be checked, and this course’s own sourcing rule applies to your work too (see Policies).

Declare which subject you chose and which frameworks you applied in your opening paragraph, so the marker can check the right things without guessing.