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Final Design Review (Presentation)

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Final Design Review Schedule

Meeting Goals

The overall goal for the review is to share your project's outcome with your "customer", the project's Client. In a business situation, this would be the final meeting with your customer, coinciding with transferring the project's outcomes to the customer, e.g. the prototype, software, design documents, etc. The team must clearly and concisely communicate the results of the semester's work to the Client.

The Final Design Review is a PowerPoint-based design review. It will be scheduled in cooperation with your client and instructors at a time during the last two weeks of the semester. In some cases, the design review may be scheduled during the reading days or during finals week. One to two hours should be allocated for the review.
The FULL team should be present and participate in the presentation. The audience will be client, PE, CE, and may include other advisors, evaluators, and consultants associated with the project.

The Dress Code for the final design review is business formal.

Final review is NOT simply the final status update.
It is NOT an additional meeting discussing what the team has done in the last few weeks of semester since last client meeting.
It is an overview of the ENTIRE project, with evidence of the design process being followed.
The full audience will the PE, CE, and client (all live), but also future students who may continue the work and other members of the client organization who will incorporate project output into their operation. They would start by reading your final report and reviewing the final review slide deck to get the complete picture. It is NOT a dear diary form of presentation. It mostly follows the order / structure of the Design Report. Because others / future teams will not see you present the slides, it's critical that all the essential information be on the face of the slides. ex: Do not plan to simply display an unlabeled graph and explain everything verbally.

  • You typically need to have about 30-40 minutes of presentation - the balance of your time will be taken by questions and discussion.
  • You only need about 30-40 slides to talk to for a 30-40 minute presentation - about one minute per slide.
  • All remaining slides can be placed to the back of the presentation after a slide with "Appendix" on it.

Use the Creating Strong PowerPoint Presentations wiki page to help you.

Template Instructions

Process Instructions

Using the Template

The template is intended to help the team cover all the items essential for the final review. While NOT an exact ‘recipe’ for all teams / projects, talk to your PE before changing it!

Creating the Slides

Follow same process as earlier Client Meetings and group deliverables.
  • Create thread in Final Deliverables EDN Forum for discussion
  • Copy template from Capstone Support to OneDrive
  • Name appropriately
  • Fill in content
  • Refer to rubric and instructions
  • Review and Edit your content! Commit to the repository as everyone edits using meaningful commit comments. As you edit, leave notes in the project management forum to explain what you've done and why to help coordinate the work.

The agenda provided is considered "typical".
Keep the Project Overview as the first item. You may re-order the remaining topics or break them up slightly differently to best suit your team's storytelling approach. For example, you may do a demo first or do parts of the demo throughout your meeting as needed.

The Agenda Items

Template PPT contains explanations for all sections. Some additional tip and information is offered here.

Project Overview

Explain the “what” of the project. These slides help set the context for the presentation by explaining the basic information someone new to the project would need so as to understand the rest of the presentation. This material must come first.

The project overview should be complete enough so that new people attending the final design review can gain a sense context for the work.
If no one 'new' attends final review, you can move quickly through these early slides.
Future Capstone teams will use this PPT as their first or second introduction to project, so complete introduction will be useful to them as well.

Engineering Definition of Problem

Leverage existing content from course deliverables: Needs and Requirements workbook, Use Cases, User Stories.

System Evaluation

Leverage existing content from course deliverables: Individual Technical Demo.

Accomplishments / Open Issues

Focus on the major accomplishments of the team. Be sure to focus on the specific results / accomplishments rather than expressing this in "diary mode”.

Even the most successful of teams may not accomplish all their goals in a single semester.
Be honest. Client or next team will be VERY unhappy and confused when they are unable to reproduce your claimed results.

Conclusions / Recommendations

Demonstrations

This may be done anywhere in the presentation, as appropriate to how your team chooses to "tell it's story". There are advantages to having a quick demo at the start of the presentation, as in "watch this!". Now, having grabbed the audience's attention, you have earned the ability to present the material behind the demo. Based on experience working with your client, it may be preferable to hold the demo(s) off until the end of the presentation so as to not interrupt the "story telling" of your slides. Alternatively, it may make sense to have small incremental demos throughout the presentation to help emphasize material in a given section. The choice is up to your team!

Tips and Tricks

  • Team member should TAKE NOTES to be included in further work or comments of Final Report.
  • Use numbered list for easier reference during discussion.
  • It is expected and reasonable to copy MUCH of this content from the EDN Forums and earlier Client Meeting slides. Goal is NOT to start from scratch, but collect the high points of the work done all semester.
    • Be sure it is updated to current status.
  • Be honest regarding accomplishments and challenges.
  • Review tips for Creating Strong PowerPoint Presentations.
  • Sharing Video Content in Webex Meetings
  • Dress Code for the final design review is business formal. Note that the Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) has professional attire available to borrow if needed. See https://ccpd.rpi.edu/students for more information (scroll down to "CCPD Clothing Closet").
  • See your PE for any questions.

Submission

PPT should be committed to the Repository - /working/Reports/Design Report + Poster