Design Notebook - due Monday, June 8 at 10am

In any design project, the final drawings, models or prototypes are only a part of the value of the design. Part of the value also lies in the process used to generate it. For example, if you contracted with somebody to design a new piece of outdoor furniture and the final design called for plastic instead of aluminum, you might want to know why. The answer could be that the price of aluminum was too high. This is useful information and adds to the value of the design, because you will now be in a position to switch to aluminum if, for example, a shortage of oil results in a rise in the price of plastics.

The purpose of the design notebook is to document your design process. You can’t begin to realize how important this information is until it is missing; then it is too late.

The design process includes:

   1. The choices you made at each step: what you chose, what you rejected, and a record of the calculations you performed
   2. A record of the results from any tests that you conducted
   3. Preliminary sketches, outlines and plans for different aspects of the design
   4. References and notes on relevant literature — particularly your conclusions concerning articles that you read or discussions that you may have had with experts in the field
   5. Ideas, questions, and notes from group meetings
   6. Summaries of conversations with associates and vendors, pasted-in copies of catalog or handbook pages, etc.

One notebook is required per person. Sign and date every page of your work as you complete it. This is a good habit anyway, but may be crucial if your company decides to seek patent protection for any part of your work, or if someone challenges your design for patent infringement.

Grading of notebooks will be: + (better than average), OK (average), - (a bit marginal). The notebook is not expected to be a polished, edited document (that’s what the reports are for) but we should be able to look at it and tell what you did and why. Incidentally, over the last several years we have found that there is a pretty good correlation between good notebooks, good designs and good project results.

The design notebooks should be handed in at the end of the course. Boxes to receive them will be available near the team mailboxes across from Terman 536.