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Final Design Report

Final Design Report is a written report describing your project and detailing what you have done the accomplishments in this semester. This report provides an opportunity to exhibit your skills in formal technical writing. The written report and final presentation should be prepared in cooperation with all members of the project team.

  1. The template for preparing the Final Design Report: Templates and Forms
  2. Rubrics for evaluation of your Final Design Report: Tasks and Due Dates

Instructions for preparing the Final Design Report

Instructions to complete each section of the report is given below:

  • Cover Page - Complete it with your Project title, Client name, month/year of submission, Team Members name with major, Project Engineer name and Chief Engineer name with discipline.
  • Acknowledgments (one page) - Acknowledge and thank all who have provided the opportunity and enabled you to complete this capstone project.
  • Executive Summary - One-page executive summary should reflect the primary problem you addressed in your capstone project and the solution you have proposed and developed. Include significant accomplishments. It provides the reader with an overview of the report and motivates them to read the full report.
  • Table of Contents - Update the table after you have completed the table. You can use the auto update field feature in word for this.
  • List of Figures / List of Tables - Name all Figures and Tables in the format given in the template. And put in the list in this section with the page numbers.
  • Glossary - Define all the abbreviations, acronyms, and terms required to interpret your final report properly, keeping in mind that many abbreviations have more than one commonly-used meaning, e.g. ATM – Asynchronous Transfer Mode or Automated Teller Machine. For any unfamiliar abbreviation, write the full name followed by the abbreviation in parentheses the first time it is mentioned in the report. Unfamiliar terms might benefit from one or two short examples as clarification. Please alphabetize this list for easy searching.
  • Section 1 Introduction - Introduce your project. Include the background information and motivation/ justification for conducting this project. You can use the information in your project statement and objectives, and technical memo.
  • Section 2 Project Overview - This gives the overview of your project and includes sub-section 2.1 to 2.3. For sub-section 2.1 to 2.3 use the information from your Project Statement and Objectives Deliverable.
    2.1. Project Statement
    2.2. Semester Primary Objectives / Deliverables
    2.3. Semester Secondary Objectives / Deliverables
    2.4. System Overview - Include the overall system block diagram (created for X? Deliverable, or Class Y activity) with the subsystems to give an overview of your project. You can use information from client meeting presentations. This is not a list of the tools nor components used but more an overview of the functionality of your system.
  • Section 3 Customer Needs and Engineering Design Requirements - Summarize the key and high priority customer needs and engineering design requirements that led to the development of your project and each of the subsystems. Use information from the Needs and Requirements spreadsheet. Utilize a tabular or list format and include any additional explanations in the text.
  • Section 4 System Concept Development - Present the system concept that the team ultimately developed. Help the reader visualize the system concept using appropriate drawings/diagrams, such as sketches, system schematics, circuit diagrams, and UML diagrams. Explain the development and selection of design concepts – such as the significant criteria that lead to specific concept selection, alternate concepts that were considered, design analysis and trade-offs. See Design Process for more info on the Design Process and where concept development fits in.
  • Section 5 Final Design - Present the final design, including the detailed design, with appropriate diagrams/drawings with design values. Describe the critical design parameters. Where applicable, address manufacturability and cost issues; include details in the Appendices. Similarly, organize and place large data tables and/or a full set of detailed diagrams/drawings in Appendices. It should be clear from this section how your design met the project's needs and requirements.
  • Section 6 System Evaluation - Copy the information from the same section of the midterm System Design Report. Add a column to the table to show your results. Outside this table, be sure to explain the information in the table. You may update if needed to represent your final plan. As part of your explanation, provide the analysis of the test results and how that validates your project design.
  • Section 7 Significant Accomplishments and Recommendations - Indicate what you have accomplished in the project this semester and give your recommendations on what can be done in the future to enhance this project. Use separate numbered lists for the Accomplishments and the Recommendations. A table with any Open Issues and your suggestions for resolving them will benefit the client (and the next team, if applicable).
  • Section 8 Conclusions - Based on the work you have done, put together a concise conclusion. What is the outcome of your work? How will it be used? Who will benefit?
  • References - Use IEEE style referencing with numbered citation in the text. https://ieee-dataport.org/sites/default/files/analysis/27/IEEE%20Citation%20Guidelines.pdf
  • Appendix A: Risk Assessment Worksheet - Append the Risk Assessment Worksheet that you have developed previously.
  • Appendix B: Engineering Standards Worksheet - Append the Engineering Standards Checklist that you have developed previously.
  • Appendix C: Bill of Materials - Add the Bill of Materials for the system developed. Include part numbers.
  • Appendix D: Ethical and Professional Responsibilities Worksheet - Your project could impact the world beyond its immediate scope. First, each student uses export:template documents\Ethical and Professional Responsibilities Worksheet - RCSID.docx and completes the table by indicating the impact of your solution on various ethical and professional issues. Add a paragraph that describes how you addressed these issues in your engineering decisions. If you feel that a particular issue does not apply to your project, explain how you reached that conclusion. Next, you must individually upload your worksheet to the Repository working/Reports. Finally, complete this Appendix as a team after reviewing each other's work. For your reference, Table 1 provides some examples.
Table 1. Example Ethical and Professional Responsibilities Table
Issues Impact, 1(low) – 5(high) Description of Impact and Related Project Decisions
Global 4 EU-based users can use our web tool. Our design met some of the European Union GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). For more information, see Chapter 4 System Requirements. We chose concept 1 because it included multi-language support and conformed to the GDPR.
Economic 5 Providing a cost-effective means to convert otherwise low-value wood to valuable fuel supports forest economies by providing additional income to landowners and the forestry industry in general. We developed concepts 5 & 6 to support the forest economies.
Environmental 5 Although the product cost was slightly increased, sustainable materials were used in the design to protect the environment. Refer to the information in Chapter X. Due to the importance of this, we selected the more expensive materials.
Societal 2 Our product provides opportunities for families to communicate in novel ways when they can’t otherwise be together, enhancing family bonds. As the team feels that the impact of this on our prototype is low, we chose to document the needs and requirements that we discovered but not to use those to down-select from our concepts. Future teams may want to revisit this.