In 1999, MIT and the Microsoft Corporation formed an alliance called the iCampus research project. The iCampus RobotWorld project was formed to investigate how to systematize the deployment and operation of courses that use design projects as a vehicle for teaching engineering. While teaching staff use computers to present lecture notes and additional support materials online, traditional computer systems don’t typically support students’ collaborative effort in team-based design projects. Specifically, technology was needed to assist the front-end stage of product design. Much of the early stages of design take place collaboratively on paper or a chalkboard, leaving teams with the task of preserving the designs or translating them into an electronic source using time-intensive software.

Team members needed to be present in order to collaborate and valuable design time was spent entering sketches and ideas from paper or the board into the computer. To simplify the collaborative procedure, the Peer Review Evaluation Process (PREP) is used to add structure to the creative development process. A PREP session begins with a specification of the problem, as well as a general format for expressing and documenting ideas. Each team member individually creates several possible design solutions for this problem in the agreed format, including sketches, basic engineering models, references, and risks and possible countermeasures.

The team leader distributes the solutions amongst the other team members for anonymous review, after which the team assembles to discuss the benefits and problems with each solution, rapidly evolving the solutions into a final design.