On becoming a winning student team: placing third in an international design competition

In the Senior Design Center of the Computer Science Department at North Carolina State University, a model has been outlined that uses teaming as a framework to support professional communication and software development process to improve student project performance. The model described above was used as the basis to form a team of computer science students who entered the IEEE Computer Society International Design Competition (CSIDC 2003). The theme of CSIDC 2003 was Added Value: Turning Computers Into Systems. The NC State student team created "Diet Download," a system that uses a bar code scanner coupled with a PDA to assist a person with following a diet plan as he or she does grocery shopping. This paper describes the experience of the CSIDC 2003 student team on their journey from the formation of their team to their third place finish in this worldwide competition.