Engineering Notebook
The Engineering Notebook is your team's story. It is a document that chronicles your journey from the initial concept to the final competition-ready drone. It should detail your design process, celebrate your breakthroughs, and, most importantly, document your challenges and how you overcame them. A well-maintained notebook is the hallmark of a great engineering team.
Because the Engineering Notebook replaces previous years' Mission Report, this may be referred to as the "written portion" in some rules or pages in this documentation or the Aerospace Jam website. If you do notice any discrepancies anywhere referencing the Mission Report still, let a competiton organizer know... we're human, too!
Total Possible Notebook Score: 20 Points
| Category | Maximum Points |
|---|---|
| The Engineering Process | 8 Points |
| Technical Detail & Data | 6 Points |
| Organization & Clarity | 6 Points |
| Total | 20 Points |
The Engineering Process (8 Points)
This section scores how well your notebook captures the process of engineering. It's not just about the final result, but the journey of brainstorming, testing, failing, and learning that your team went through.
| Score | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Excellent (7-8 Points) | The notebook tells a complete story of the team's design journey. It includes brainstorming sessions, multiple design iterations, and clear documentation of both successes and failures. The team reflects on why certain ideas were chosen and others were abandoned, demonstrating a thoughtful and iterative design process. |
| Good (4-6 Points) | The notebook documents key decisions and milestones but may be missing the context behind them. It shows what the team did, but not always why they did it. Some failures and learning moments are recorded, but not consistently. |
| Needs Improvement (1-3 Points) | The notebook reads like a simple log of activities with little detail on the design process. It lacks evidence of brainstorming, iteration, or reflection on challenges. |
Technical Detail & Data (6 Points)
This category evaluates the quality and completeness of the technical information in your notebook. It should serve as a detailed technical reference for your project.
| Score | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Excellent (5-6 Points) | The notebook is rich with technical details. It includes labeled diagrams, schematics, code snippets (with explanations), and data from sensor testing or flight tests. The team clearly documents technical problems and the specific steps taken to solve them. |
| Good (3-4 Points) | The notebook contains some technical information, but it may be incomplete or lack detail. For example, it might mention a code change without including the code itself, or show a final design without diagrams of the prototypes. |
| Needs Improvement (1-2 Points) | The notebook contains very few technical specifics. Descriptions are high-level and lack the detail needed for a judge to understand the drone's construction and programming. |
Organization & Clarity (6 Points)
This section scores the overall readability and structure of your notebook. A well-organized notebook allows a judge to easily follow your team's progress and find specific information.
A great way to structure your notebook is to base your entries on your git commits. The guide on Project Setup explains how to write good commit messages. Using these as a starting point for your notebook entries is a fantastic way to ensure you are documenting your progress consistently!
| Score | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Excellent (5-6 Points) | The notebook is well-organized and easy to follow. Entries are dated, written clearly, and authored by the team members who did the work. It includes a table of contents, and a reader can easily trace the project's timeline and key developments. |
| Good (3-4 Points) | The notebook has a basic structure (like dated entries), but may be difficult to navigate. It may be missing a table of contents, or entries might be messy and hard to read. |
| Needs Improvement (1-2 Points) | The notebook is disorganized and lacks a clear structure. Entries are sporadic, undated, or difficult to decipher, making it hard for a judge to understand the project's progression. |
Submission Guidelines
- Format: The Engineering Notebook should be submitted as a single digital file (PDF is preferred) along with your codebase.
- Deadline: The notebook must be submitted by the same deadline as the codebase, published on the front page of the docs.
- Content: While there is no page limit, focus on quality over quantity. A concise, well-documented 20-page notebook is far more valuable than a 100-page book of unorganized notes.
Please submit your codebase digitally, or as a digital scan of a physical notebook. Links to cloud document providers are accepted (e.g. to Canva, Google Docs, etc.), but PDFs or fully self-contained files are preferred. If there is an issue with your cloud document provider's link, attempts will be made to notify you of the issues, but if you do not respond or do not fix the issues before the deadline, your submissions will not be scored.