Electrical Engineering Senior Design Project Guidelines

							                      Electrical Engineering Senior Design Project Guidelines
                                        ELEN 194/195/196

                                                   Kitts - 10/1/04


In order to establish a consistent and well-understood framework for conducting senior projects, the following
Project Guidelines are proposed. These guidelines provide a process structure while providing individual
teams/advisors with the flexibility to adapt to the specific needs of each project.

These guidelines are generally consistent with the informal steps followed by EE faculty in previous years and are
an initial attempt to allow integration with guidelines adopted by other engineering departments. Additional
modification in future years should be considered in order to improve this integration and consistency with other
departmental programs.

Project Checklist

These items are the minimum set of deliverables for all EE projects:

        ___      Submit Project Proposal Form                  End of 3rd Week of Fall Quarter
        ___      Submit Problem Statement/Specification        End of 5th Week of Fall Quarter
        ___      Design Review                                 Typical during 10th Week of Fall Quarter
        ___      Initial Functional Proto/Proof of Concept     At Design Review
        ___      Design Report                                 End of Fall Quarter

        ___      Revised Design Report                         End of 3rd Week of Winter Quarter
        ___      Detailed Design Documentation                 End of Winter Quarter
        ___      Demonstration of initial implementation       End of Winter Quarter

        ___      Design Conference                             Early to mid-May
        ___      Draft Thesis                                  Mid-May
        ___      Thesis                                        End of Spring Quarter
        ___      Demonstration of Final implementation         End of Spring Quarter
        ___      Participation/demonstration at Open House     End of Spring Quarter
Fall Quarter
Grading guidelines:

         20%      Participation in general EE 194 classes and timely submission of Project Proposal Form
         80%      Performance in design project (rated by project advisor), broken down as follows:

                  20%       Problem Statement/Specification
                  30%       Design Report
                  20%       Design Review
                  10%       Functional Demo / Proof of Concept
                  20%       Discretionary: This should be defined by advisor and disclosed to students.


Problem Statement/Specification Guidelines:

This document should concisely state the goal of the project. In addition, it should provide a high-level system
specification that defines relevant inputs, outputs, functions and capabilities of the system. These should be stated in
a non-implementation-specific manner, and where appropriate should provide quantitative performance
requirements. Discuss specific requirements with your advisor.

Document contents might include:
    Motivation / Background
    Project Goal
    System Specification
    User Scenarios
    Evaluation Criteria

Grading should be based on the documents ability to answers to the following questions:
     Is there sufficient technical content in the project?
     Do the stakeholders agree on the project’s purpose and scope?
     Do the stakeholders have a vision of how the product will be used?
     Do the stakeholders agree on project success criteria?
     Is the level of detail sufficient for a 3rd party to evaluate the success of the final result?

Design Report:

This document should present the complete conceptual design of the device/system and a management plan for
bringing the project to fruition. Discuss specific requirements with your advisor.

Design Description contents might include:
     Introduction summarizing motivation and problem statement (evolved from Problem Statement)
     System Specification (evolved from Problem Statement)
     Benchmarking results
     System Architecture
     Functional Analysis and Requirements
     Subsystem/Component Specification Flowdown
     Subsystem/Component Alternative Generation and Trade-offs (for several of the most important design
        features)
     Results of any initial simulation, analysis, prototyping, experiments
     Presentation of Design
     Sketches, Diagrams, Schematics, Flowcharts, Control Block Diagrams, State Charts, etc.
     Systems Engineering analyses pertaining to issues such as mass/power/volume/error budgets, etc.
     Test plan
        Outline of a User Manual

Management Plan contents might include:
    Risks and Mitigation Plan
    Budget Information
    Policies for Team meetings, communication, documentation, continuity
    Timeline

Grading should be based on the documents ability to answers to the following questions:
     Are the requirements and constraints suitably defined?
     Is the design/project feasible from both technology and managerial perspectives?
     Is there strong rationale for the design?
     Is the design producible?
     Is the proposed test plan appropriate?
     Is the intended field operation of the device suitably defined?
     Is the documentation sufficient for a 3rd party to understand the project design and management plan?

Discretionary Component

A discretionary component is included to allow advisors to require specific tasks or deliverables appropriate for the
particular project. Possible requirements may include prototyping or proof-of-concept implementation/testing,
coordination with project collaborators, etc.
Winter Quarter
Overall grading guidelines:

         20%      Participation in general EE 195 classes
         80%      Performance in design project (rated by project advisor), broken down as follows:

                  20%      Revised Design Report
                  20%      Detailed Design Documentation
                  40%      Demonstration of Initial Implementation
                  20%      Discretionary: This should be defined by advisor and disclosed to students.


Design Review and Updated Design Report:

As appropriate, the team should present a design review to the advisor and/or a panel of independent reviewers.
Ideally, the review will include demonstration or results from initial component or subsystem level proof-of-concept
prototypes. Based on review feedback, the team should update the Design Report. The Design Report should also
be enhanced through the addition of detailed design information and/or prototyping results that have been developed
to date.

Grading should be based on the team’s ability to address questions such as:
     Is the vision of the product complete and stable?
     Has the architecture been defined and stabilized?
     Have all identified risks been eliminated or covered by a contingency plan?
     Do stakeholders agree on the likely success of the project?

Construction

Students begin implementation of the project and deliver the first version of the implementation, showing basic end-
to-end functionality. Students should meet with their advisor frequently during the quarter for guidance.

Grading should be based on the following aspects of the team’s implementation:
     Does the implementation show useful, end-to-end functionality?
     Are the features implemented of the highest importance?
     Is the implementation robust?
     Can a competent third party understand, verify/test, and use the product?

Discretionary Component

A discretionary component is included to allow advisors to require specific tasks or deliverables appropriate for the
particular project. Possible requirements may include documentation (sketches, schematics, source/pseudo code,
performance measurements, design process studies, etc.), tasks associated with collaborators, the
development/execution of test/verification techniques, etc.
Spring Quarter
Overall grading guidelines:

         20%      Participation in general EE 194 classes and timely submission of Project Proposal Form
         80%      Performance in design project (rated by project advisor), broken down as follows:

                  20%      Design Conference Participation and Performance
                   5%      Draft Final Design Report
                  25%      Demonstration of Final Implementation
                   5%      Participation in /Demonstration at Open House
                  25%      Final Design Report
                  20%      Discretionary: This should be defined by advisor and disclosed to students.

Delivery Phase

Students complete implementation, document the system, and participate in the senior design conference. Students
should meet with their advisor frequently during the quarter for guidance. Note: the thesis must be submitted in both
hardcopy and PDF format to the advisor before it is considered delivered. In addition, advisors may required other
submissions (such as the test/return of equipment, etc.) prior to assigning a course grade.

Key questions and issues the report/thesis, implementation, and presentation should answer:
     Could a similar team of competent engineers re-implement the product with only the documentation as
        guidance?
     Are the criteria for success defined in the conception phase satisfied?
     Is the rationale for the form of the design justified and valid?
     Does the team provide an appropriate context for the project relevant to the topics in the Engineering
        Handbook?
     Is the customer pleased?

Thesis

The department and university have specific guidelines on the preparation of the thesis document; submissions not
conforming to these guidelines will not be accepted. Students are encouraged to look at thesis documents from
previous years to see how such documents are written in practice.

Typical thesis chapters include (but you are not constrained to this format – discuss this with your advisor):
     Introduction
     System Overview
     Individual chapters on primary system components
              o Component requirements and budget allocations
              o Alternatives
              o Trade-offs
              o Analysis and prototyping results
              o Detailed design descriptions
              o Component-level testing/verification
     System Integration and Test
              o Integration process
              o System-level test plans and performance results
     Professional Context
              o Discussion of your system relevant to the issues reviewed in the Engineering Handbook
     Summary and Conclusions
              o Summary of project
              o Specific contributions
              o Lessons Learned
            o Future work
            o Project conclusion
        Appendices
            o Detailed design documentation
            o User manual
            o Maintenance Guide
            o Detailed test results

Discretionary Component

A discretionary component is included to allow advisors to require specific tasks or deliverables appropriate for the
particular project. Possible requirements may include documentation (sketches, schematics, source/pseudo code,
performance measurements, design process studies, etc.), tasks associated with collaborators, the
development/execution of test/verification techniques, etc.
General Grading Guidelines
A senior design course section should be treated as any other course section. Work is expected to be completed on
time. Late deliverables will be assessed a penalty of 20% for each week, or fraction of a week, after the deadline.
The design project is considered a three course sequence and therefore failure of any one course section requires that
the entire sequence be completed again.

Plagiarism will not be tolerated. The first offense will result in a score of zero (0) on the offending deliverable. A
second instance of plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the quarter.

Only letter grades or an incomplete will be awarded; a grade of “N” is not allowed.

When grading project responsiveness to key questions summarized above, grading is recommended to follow this
general guideline:

        Definitely satisfied: 4
        Mostly satisfied: 3
        Somewhat satisfied: 2
        Not satisfied: 1
        Missing: 0