Guidelines for Design Notebooks

A design notebook is a diary of ALL activity relevant to your project. It is used to record information acquired and ideas developed during the design process.

Below are some guidelines for keeping a design notebook, including general recommendations of what to include, as well as required items related to the format of your notebook.

Below are also details on how your notebook will be evaluated throughout the two-quarter sequence. Your grade for this course will reflect, in part, the quality of your notebook.

Why keep a design notebook?

  • The design notebook documents your effort on a project. It is the principal evidence of your individual effort and is therefore an important factor in your course grade.
  • Design notebooks may be used in patent and legal evaluations.
  • The design notebook is a useful resource for preparing reports.
  • Since projects span several quarters, the design notebook helps you recall things from one quarter to the next, or provides an introduction for future teams who may take up the project. Finally, it prevents future teams from making the same mistakes that you made on the project.

Design notebook contents: What goes in the design notebook (general)?

  • ALL work done on the project, including,
    • brainstorming
    • background research and literature searching (keep detailed records of library and patent searches and relevant URLs resulting from web searches)
    • sketches
    • calculations
    • If documents are too big to insert, note what they contain and where they can be found (for example, you may have information on the group web site, you may have a separate folder or binder to keep supplementary information).
  • Record project meetings, including all team sessions (including subgroup meetings). This also includes relevant (i.e. do not include e-mails scheduling meetings) phone and email conversations with your team members and advisor, or anyone consulting with you on the project. Be sure to include the following in your notes:
    • time and date of meeting; names of all individuals present
    • items discussed
    • action items that result from the meeting
  • Record relevant information and discussions from lectures.
  • Include enough narrative to explain what is being done; make entries readable by other engineers (including conclusions and recommendations).

Design notebook format (items REQUIRED to be in the notebook for BE187)

  • The notebook should be bound, not a loose-leaf or spiral type notebook (i.e. pages would have to be torn out to be removed)
  • name of course, name of project, your name, phone number, and email address on the front cover.
  • a list of all relevant contact information for your team members and advisor on the first page. Follow this with a Project Name.
  • number all pages in the notebook
  • use ink
  • date all entries
  • tape (no staples) documents into notebook (e.g., handouts from class, meeting agendas)
  • write legibly
  • include narrative to describe sketches, diagrams, plots, and equations
  • dated counter-signatures by your faculty advisor to confirm entries (at least once every two weeks)

Design notebook evaluation

  • Advisors are encouraged to perform at least one random "spot check" of your notebook.
  • Notebooks will be turned in once, mid-quarter for grading. They will also be graded in 187C.
  • The quality of your notebook is part of your grade for this course.
  • Do not include your assignments that you turn in for the course such as progress reports, presentations, and other required written assignments.

Notebook Grading Policy and General Guidelines

The criteria used to grade design student notebooks are listed in three categories. The first two are fairly basic. Failing to meet them will harm your grade but will not be used to distinguish between average, very good, and outstanding students. Content, the last category, is assessed to provide this distinction.

  1. Basic minimal notebook requirements

    The basic minimum notebook requirements assure that your lab notebook can be identified as yours and can be returned to you after grading. The identification may be helpful in returning the notebook if it is lost or misplaced. It is required that you include your name, e-mail address, phone number, course name and number, and address on your lab notebook for this purpose. Good design and laboratory practices require that you use a notebook with numbered pages, date your entries, attach loose pages with tape, and make your entries in ink. As nearly all meet these requirements with minimal effort, failing to meet them will have a strong negative effect on your grade.

  2. Basic formatting and logging requirements

    Good laboratory practices require that you log work on a project with enough diligence so that your notebook can be used later as a historical record for yourself, your team, and for intellectual property purposes. Entries should be dated and list whether the session involved individual work, a group meeting, or a meeting or contact with a client. Entries should list who took part in the meeting, contact, or communication. For group entries, a log of what was discussed and the endpoints and action items of the meetings should be included. If any of the information is to be useful in your lab notebook, it must be readable. These entries assist you in referencing the work you did earlier in the quarter. You may revisit an idea later in the quarter and wonder why you had earlier tabled it. Strong notebooks can assist you in future quarters if you continue the project or if you pass the project on to another team. If your project develops intellectual property, the dated records of your lab notebook will be used in your submission for a possible patent application. A strong notebook will also be useful if your patent is ever challenged or needs to be defended if others are charged with infringing your patent. For all of these reasons, the notebook must be written with enough detail to be useful by a qualified but unfamiliar reader.

    Your work to meet these requirements will help you develop good habits that will be useful to you throughout your career. As most design students find mastering these habits to be a relatively manageable task, failing to meet them will have a negative effect on your grade. The criteria used to distinguish between outstanding, very good, and average students follows.

  3. Content

    Your notebook will be assessed for its content in relation to the skills we aim to teach in this course. Your notebook should follow a logical sequence that demonstrates that you determine the specifications of the project through analysis of needs and priorities. The notebook should attribute prior work done in relevant and related areas, citing publications, patents, and commercial products. When applicable, your notebook should show what steps you have undertaken to assure safety for the user of your device and/or patient whom it is designed to serve.

    The most crucial area of the content assessment is your documentation of design ideas, calculations, and the further intellectual work needed to develop a successful prototype. Your sketches and figures of design ideas will be judged for their clarity, quality, and novelty. Your work will be assessed to see if you have used engineering principles to guide and focus your work rather than trial and error methods.

    The notebook is your opportunity to showcase your individual ideas and efforts that distinguish your work from the overall team effort. Therefore, you are encouraged to allocate time for individual work throughout the quarter. Individual work will generally produce more thorough and organized development of a final design and prototype and thus will help the team also. As you progress through the project, realize that you will become more and more of an expert on the discipline of your project. Therefore, be careful to step back and continue to write entries for an audience of qualified but unfamiliar readers. This style will help the instructor gauge the quality of your individual contributions. You may develop brilliant ideas, but the notebook must provide a minimum of information so the contribution can be recognized. Readable entries are obviously necessary for proper recognition also. Notebooks are one of the essential methods used to distinguish contributions among team members. The instructors can verify information in the notebook on individual contributions via various methods. So, as is normally expected, remain truthful. Students who lead a project yet keep a vague notebook will have to work harder in other aspects of the class to get their contributions recognized.