Final Project Report

Careful documentation of projects and meaningful reflection on outcomes and process is an important part of the course. Each final project requires an accompanying report and video (no more than 1-2 minutes) submitted as a post to the 16-223 WordPress site. The primary purpose of the report is to present the project as a completed artifact, with an emphasis on explaining how it meets a human need. Overall, it should document how the human context spurred questions, the specific choices made in response, whether they were successful, and how future work could improve the result.

Enough technical documentation must be provided that a person skilled in the art could replicate the construction of the project. The video should demonstrate the behavior of the project in its intended context.

The report should focus on inquiry and outcome more than development narrative. Please don’t just write the story of everything that happened; please carefully consider whether any mistakes and diversions would be enlightening to the reader.

The nature of the course is that all projects can be considered as works-in-progress or early prototypes. The critical skill of this writeup is dispassionately examining the work as a starting point for subsequent revisions. It should help that you aren’t actually responsible for future work.

For projects which shifted to CAD for the final iteration, please comment on the lessons learned from the physical prototyping stage which support the plausibility of the final design.

Submission Guidelines

Please adhere closely to the following submission guidelines:

  1. Text

    1. Report documents must be submitted within a single WordPress post on the 16-223 WordPress site, with supportive code and engineering files attached as uploads. (We are currently having some trouble with site security restrictions, if your files won’t upload please try zipping them.)

    2. Each group must submit one joint report. If a group member fails to fulfill their documentation role, the other group members should submit what they can on time and ask for an extension with an explanation.

    3. Posts may be public or private at your discretion. Please add all contributing students as post authors so the post will show up on each student’s index. Some hints on using site features can be found on the Site Help page.

    4. Reports must generally include a statement of objectives, general description, results, photos, technical documentation, and citations of related work.

  2. Media

    1. The post should include inline project photos.

    2. For projects which shifted to CAD for the final iteration, please include video or image renderings as appropriate to convey the intended movement and operation.

    3. Please embed your video so it can be watched directly from the post. The easiest way to do this is to host it on a third-party site. Videos hosted directly on the course site should be .mp4 files and use the appropriate video shortcodes. N.B. hosted QuickTime .mov files cannot be embedded.

    4. Project videos are encouraged to include a title and credits.

    5. Project videos must adhere to the minimum and maximum duration limits (including titles and credits).

  3. Technical Documentation

    1. All program source code is required and must be provided as uploads. Source code should be provided in original format. Short explanatory fragments can also be included inline. Please don’t just paste the code into a post unless it is tagged for proper code indentation and formatting. A dump of unformatted code is unreadable and useless for evaluation.

    2. Any original mechanical CAD files should be uploaded in the original format.

    3. Mechanical drawings and sketches are encouraged and may be provided as inline images or as a PDF upload. Mechanical drawings should clearly specify the scale and units.

    4. Please provide a wiring diagram of the as-built state as an inline image or PDF upload. Hand-drawn schematics are fine, but it must use conventional symbols and notation.

Project Report Outline

Following are general prompts for expected content for the main report text. This is a summary outline, but the report itself should be written as a cohesive text, please do not simply provide short answers.

  1. Project Title

  2. Abstract: provide a brief paragraph summarizing the overall goals and results.

  3. Objectives: state your goals, and discuss what specific features are within scope for the project.

  4. Implementation: discuss your design choices.

  5. Outcomes: discuss the successes and failures of your choices.

  6. Future Work: discuss the goals and features for the next iteration of this project.

  7. Contribution: please provide a clear statement of each author’s individual contribution to the outcomes.

  8. Embedded project video (not to exceed specified limit, generally one or two minutes).

  9. Photo Documentation: provide captioned photos which support your discussion. Please consider the purpose of each photo and write a caption which helps the reader understand your intent.

  10. Citations: please provide references or links to related work.

  11. Required Supporting Material

    1. source code

    2. CAD files

    3. mechanical drawings

    4. electronic schematics