Memos
In general, you will create weekly memos that document your team's accomplishments and progress. The memos should all be turned in to Smartsite Assignments by midnight on the respective due date (typically Fridays).
Each memo should stand on its own and you will be able to use the content as a base to develop the reports. In addition to turning in the assignment, you are welcome to share these memos with your project sponsor(s) for feedback but the main audience you should address are the course instructors.
The memos should have no more than two pages of main content and an optional additional two pages of appendices. The "main content" is defined as the essential text, figures, tables, etc. to tell your story. Additionally, feel free to link to rich media: videos, websites, demos, etc. This main content should stand on its own without the appendices. The appendices can include figures, tables, drawings, renderings, analyses, source code, and other relevant material to support the story told in your main content pages if the reader desires to understand further details. The appendices should not be required to understand the main content.
- Each memo must be submitted as a single PDF document made up of 8.5" x 11" sheets to Smartsite. You will be docked points if you submit a format other than PDF.
- Your group is free to use any software you prefer to prepare the documents. [1].
- They should be treated as a professional documents and formatted as such.
- The audience you should write for is a technically competent reader, e.g. another engineering colleague or engineering management, and/or your project sponsor.
| [1] | I recommend collaborative editors for team work like Google Docs, ShareLaTeX, OverLeaf, SageMathCloud, Etherpad, etc. |
Memo 1: Project Selection [Due: Friday, January 8, 2016]
This "memo" will be in the form of a CATME Team Maker Survey, a cover letter, and your résumé. You will receive a notice via email and will need to fill out the survey on the CATME website. Your cover letter and résumé should be turned in via Smartsite as a single PDF. Note that your résumé should not exceed more that two pages. Prepend the résumé with a 1 page cover letter that explains why you should be chosen for the projects that you have selected on the CATME survey.
The CATME Survey can be accessed via this link:
Resources for developing your résumé and cover letter can be found on the resources page.
Memo 2: Needs and Specs [Due: Friday, January 15, 2016]
The purpose of this memo is to summarize what you have learned from the stakeholders in your project, in particular your sponsors' needs and desired outcomes. You should use the initial conversations with the sponsor to learn much as possible. As soon as the projects are assigned you should initiate contact with your sponsor for an interview.
For the first part of the memo, the purpose will be to communicate the sponsor's needs in your own language as you understand them. We recommend using the techniques explained in Chapter 5 and in class to generate these needs.
Secondly, you should show preliminary target specifications based on the needs that you have found. Techniques for generating the specifications from the needs are provided in Chapter 6, where the first portion explains getting to target specs.
Suggestions of what may be helpful to include:
- Summary of the problem, i.e. the mission statement.
- The organized identified needs.
- The organized target specifications.
- Reflections on the process and the results.
Memo 3: Concept Generation [Due: Friday, January 22, 2016]
The purpose of this memo is to summarize your initial exploration of external and internal concepts. Using the needs and specifications that you developed in the previous weeks and those that you continue to identify during your interactions with stakeholders, you should begin to generate concepts that can meet the specifications.
The external concepts should be obtained through extensive searches in product information on the web, patents, discussions with experts, literature searches, etc. Specifications from external concepts should be compared to specifications you have derived from your needs.
You should also generate a large number of internal concepts both individually and as a group. The more concepts you can generate, the better. Also remember to suspend judgment during this process. The goal is to explore all possibilities regardless of how crazy they seem.
The memo should present the findings of the preliminary external and internal concept generation process. We highly recommend making heavy use of graphical means to communicate the concepts along with accompanying textual information. All of your concepts will not fit into the standard memo format, so feel free to make the appendices longer as necessary to show the breadth of your work for this particular memo.
You are welcome to use any process to generate concepts, but we recommend following the processes presented in class and in the text as a starting point.
Suggestions of what to include:
- Problem decomposition (function diagrams, etc.)
- Identification of critical sub-problems.
- Summary of external concepts and how they influenced your internal concepts.
- Summary of internal concepts along with the main themes.
- An organized depiction of the developed concepts (e.g. tables, charts, classification trees, combination tables, etc.)
- Reflection on the process and the results.
Memo 4: Preliminary Analysis [Due: Friday, Feburary 5, 2016]
To select your final design concept, you will need to determine if the different concepts meet your target specifications. This typically requires preliminary engineering analysis and/or testing to make those decisions. For many specifications a "back-of-the-envelope" calculation is sufficient for decision making and is preferred because it takes little time. This memo should detail the preliminary analyses for any concepts that need to be evaluated. Analysis is not required for all of your concepts. To reduce the number of concepts feel free to screen them at this point. If you believe testing is required to make your final concept selection you will need to explain the necessary testing and a plan to get that done.
Suggestions of what to include:
- Descriptions of the methods needed to determine if concepts meet target specifications.
- Screened concepts that need analyses or testing for further scoring.
- Preliminary analyses that shows whether concepts meet or fail to meet target specifications.
- Plans or results from any required testing.
- Any other relevant analyses that you have done.
Memo 5: Concept Selection [Due: Friday, Feburary 19, 2016]
The purpose of this memo is to show that you have narrowed down your concepts and have a solution that you want to move forward with. Ideally, you have one concept at this point, but if not, you should be down to a very minimal set of choices and have a strong justification as to why you are having a hard time deciding. Finally, you should show that your selected concept has a very high probability of meeting your target specs and solving your problem.
Suggestions of what to include:
- A detailed description of your selected concept.
- Proof that indicates this concept will meet all or most of your target specifications. If it doesn't meet all of them, justification as to why is needed.
- Justification for your elimination of the abandoned concepts.
- A description of your selection process to document why you ended up with the selected choice.
- Any screening or scoring charts/tables/graphs, etc.