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PROJECT POSTER
REQUIREMENTS ECE 480 |
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1.1 INTRODUCTION One of the
most important skills that a technical person must develop to become
successful is to communicate effectively the essence of his/her technical
work in an extraordinarily short time and/or small space. Designing and producing
a project poster provides the mechanism for each team to enhance this skill.
Further, increasingly professional meetings are expanding the number and
scope of their “poster sessions” as one meaning of increasing the technical
content of the meetings; hence this is a skill that will have practical
applications for many new technical professionals. NEW—ECE Poster Contest This
semester, for the first time, the ECE posters will compete for a $1,000
prize. The judges are the visiting
high school students, who will each be given a (necessarily brief) time to
examine posters. Any posters not seen
by a particular student will not count either way… i.e., the rankings of each
poster will be averaged only over the high school students who visited
it. Their criteria (equally weighted)
will be: visual appeal, overall
clarity, and evidence of success. SO
plan your posters to be attractive, well organized, clear, and make sure
people can see what you’ve actually accomplished! The poster
will also help to communicate to the judges of the Prism VentureWorks
Prizes what the accomplishments of the team have been. Finally, since the posters are displayed on
the walls of the department for at least a semester, they serve to showcase
the breadth and depth of the departmental senior design activity, for Design
Day guests and visitors to the In addition
to satisfying the “technical” requirements listed below, I strongly recommend
that you heed the advice of Karl Gude, who spoke to
the class and provided web pages and a handout on how to design EFFECTIVE
posters. 1.1.1
Target Audiences There are
four target audiences for the posters. Judges of the poster contest will be
high school students visiting Design Day, and the Prism VentureWorks
Prize judges, who are engineers from industry. The second priority is undergraduate
students, as discussed in the previous paragraph. The third priority is
technical visitors to the department. It should be remembered that many of
these visitors are extremely knowledgeable in one or two technical areas, but
they are not experts in all facets of electrical and computer engineering.
Finally, the fourth priority is the lay public who may walk through the
building for various reasons or may visit your posters at Design Day. 1.1.2
Required Poster Size and Mounting Posters must
be sized to fit in departmental display cases. Each poster shall be 30 inches high by 24
inches wide and printed on the plotter available in DECS. You should leave about ½ inch margin, so
the actual size in which text must fit is 29 inches high by 23 inches wide.
Your poster must be mounted neatly on a 30” x 24” piece of backing available
from the ECE Shop. The best way we
have found is to print and laminate the poster at DECS (you must actually go
down there to make the printing arrangements). DECS will know how to charge the laminating
cost to the ECE Department, but someone on your team must have enough print
quota to cover two copies of the poster (300 pages of quota altogether). If you do NOT have enough quota, email ME (goodman@egr.msu.edu)
by TUESDAY asking for it, and I will add 300 pages to your quota. Posters in general should use brief and
to-the-point word descriptions. Pick up your poster boards from the shop
(during its open hours) and staple the laminated poster to the poster board
(in the past, we used spray adhesive and had problems with its durability, so
we now recommend stapling).
Questions: see Brian or Gregg. Graphics and
photos add interest to the poster and should be included on the poster. Make
sure the font sizes are large enough that the poster can be read from a
distance of 3-4 feet. Information on printing the poster can be found at the
website: www.egr.msu.edu/decs/facilities/plotter.php. The advice of Karl Gude
(handouts and PowerPoints on course web site) should
help you to make your poster design attractive. Most students
find it easiest to make the poster using Microsoft PowerPoint. That is not a requirement, but PowerPoint
does allow you to start off using “page setup” to specify the poster size and
appropriate margins to fit the required layout, etc., so unless you are more
familiar with some other publications package, I’d suggest using PowerPoint. 1.2
OUTLINE OF POSTER CONTENT (required, suggested,
and optional) This section
and its associated subsections describe the items to appear on the poster. Items may be laid out as you choose,
but each should be readily identifiable. Notice that items described in the
following subsections are condensed from the description of the
project proposal/final report, as they should be on the poster. The items listed as “suggested” do not
have to be labeled as shown here, but the information should be available in
some form on the poster. 1.2.1
Project Title: (Required) The title of
the poster, and of the project, should be descriptive but reasonable in
length. Fifty characters should be an upper limit. 1.2.2 Team
Number:
(Required) The team
number shall be associated with the team member names to aid in the poster
evaluation. 1.2.3
Names:
(Required) The names of
the project sponsor(s), team members, and faculty facilitator shall all be
provided. If the sponsor is off-campus, a general location shall be provided.
1.2.4
Abstract: (Suggested) The abstract
for the project shall be included. It should be similar to that in the
proposal and final report, except for possible shortening. 1.2.5
Acknowledgments: (Optional) If the
sponsor(s) and/or other organization(s) have contributed significant
assistance in the form of technical advice, equipment, or financial aid, etc.,
a brief acknowledgement of this contribution shall be included. Sponsor logo is required for projects
sponsored outside the university. 1.2.6
Introduction: (Suggested) The
introduction shall contain the following components, each of which is a
condensed version from the project proposal:
1.2.7
Design Requirements: (Required) This section
shall include the following components, each of which is a condensed version from
the project proposal:
1.2.8
End-Product Description: (Suggested) This shall be
a one-paragraph description of the commercialized end product. It shall be in
the form of a technical product announcement as opposed to a product
advertisement. 1.2.9
Technical Approach: (Suggested) This section
shall summarize the technical approaches used for the design. This section
often includes block diagrams, flow charts, schematics, etc. 1.2.10
Testing Approach: (if applicable) This section
shall summarize the testing approach used. 1.2.11
Budget:
(in some form) This section
shall indicate the actual budget of the project. As appropriate, it may show either the
costs of building your prototype or the projected cost per unit of building
the final product. 1.2.12
Final Product/Project Results: (Required) This section
shall describe the final design or product achieved. It should document the
product/design performance in comparison to the design specification. This
section may also discuss areas or ideas for future improvement. Photographs
of the final product may be appropriate in this section. 1.2.12
References: (If required by content) This section
shall provide citations of sources of any protected material used on the
poster. |
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