CSE477 Design Reviews

What is a Design-Review Package?

Engineering design-review packages are detailed yet concise descriptions of your design. Their purpose is (1) to force you to think through all the details of a design, (2) to allow another engineer to understand your design, and (3) to provide a permanent record of your design. They should include the work you have accomplished, a description of what you must do to complete the design, and they must identify potential problem areas. A good package will help your reviewer find problems with your design, so you can solve them early rather than later.

Use the following outline for your review packages:

  1. Introduction: A short description and functional overview of your design
  2. Requirements: The specifications your product must meet, typically written in table format. The requirements table should include pinouts, interfaces, power consumption, speed, code size, etc.
  3. Schedule
  4. Design: Block and detailed design information, design tradeoffs and critical design parameters, documented code, etc.
  5. Parts: A parts list (in industry this list would include part cost, but you can skip cost), and identification of problematic parts. This list includes hardware and software.
  6. Analysis: The analysis showing that your design will work, including a worst-case analysis (for example, what happens if the memory chips are slow)
  7. Test: How you plan to test your design (both hardware and software), and any test data
  8. Design Issues: Where are the likely problems in your design
  9. Response to Reviewer Comments: Your response to the reviewer comments from the prior design review
  10. References: Technical references, data sheets, etc.

What is a Final Report?

A final report describes all the technical details of your design. It is a superset of your final design package, and should include all the information from your final design package *plus*
  1. Any last-minute design changes
  2. Response to the reviewer comments from your final review
  3. Test/performance data from your completed project, showing that it works
  4. Your design brochure
After you have a final design package, item (3) is the only one that should take you any real time.  You should take data showing that your project is completely functional, with numbers if appropriate.

Basically, a final report performs 3 functions: (1) it shows that your design meets requirements, (2) it shows that your design is completely functional, and (3) it is a repository for all the technical information describing your design.

What You Must Accomplish in this Class

A primary focus of this class is exposing you to the engineering-design practices you will use in industry. Engineers in industry rarely work alone, and always review each other's designs; indeed, no product ever comes to market without having been reviewed multiple times by other engineers.

In CSE477 you will work in teams on large-scale projects, and you will document your designs at every step in the process. You will conduct preliminary and final design reviews, both in writing and orally, and you will also review another team's design for correctness.

We will split the class into teams of three, and each team will design and build a unique project. You must hand in or complete the following to pass the class:

  1. A 5-page project proposal
  2. A preliminary design package, including a parts list
  3. An oral presentation of your preliminary design
  4. A detailed review of another team's preliminary-design package
  5. A final design package
  6. An oral presentation of your final design
  7. A detailed review of another team's final-design package
  8. A 1-page product brochure (web brochure)
  9. A laboratory demonstration of your completed project
  10. A final report, that includes all your design information
You must post all your written material electronically, in an editable format, on a web page dedicated to your project.

How do you respond to your reviewers?

In your final design package and in your final report, you must respond to each and every one of the recommendations your reviewers made on your preliminary design package and final design package, respectively. You should address the reviews point-by-point, by analyzing each recommendation on technical grounds, and then either:
  1. Agreeing with the recommendation and explaining how you implemented it
  2. Agreeing with the recommendation but declining to implement it for reasons of schedule, difficulty, lack of need
  3. Disagreeing with the recommendation and justifying your disagreement on technical grounds

 
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