Report Template
Structure and basic contents of a final
report.
This chapter provides the structure of a report.
For each structure element the contents are
explained.
Cover / Front Page Report
Name and student number
Name and descriptive subtitle
Assignor’s/Coach’s
Name:
TU/e Industrial
Design Domain and project coach
Expert/s:
Names of experts
consulted as a significant part of the project input
Assignment/Project
Dates:
Start and end
date for the assignment/project
Team Mate [if
applicable]:
Name of team
mate(s)
CONTENTS
1 Introduction
This is
a description of the area being investigated.
It should include an explanation of the problem or issue being
addressed, the motivation and overall direction for the assignment/project. For example, if your assignment/project were
to design a new mousetrap, you would probably start by describing current
mousetraps and explain the problems associated with them. This introduces the project area to the
reader. There may be several sub-areas
to describe in the introduction such as:
mice and their characteristics, current mousetrap technical and design
issues, user and usage issues, etc.
Where relevant, make use of existing knowledge (ISO norms, books,
publications) to support your descriptions and to position your assignment/project. You should also include in this section why
this area is interesting to you and what you bring to the work (specific
interest or motivation, previous work or personal connections are all
relevant).
2 Objective *
This is a general description of:
- the assignment/project goals
- areas of investigation and
- results achieved.
Here you describe exactly what you want to achieve with your assignment/project. This is basically a design brief for you. You should try to focus on a single problem
to keep your assignment/project focused.
Going back to the mousetrap example, maybe you want to focus on creating
a mousetrap that can catch more than one mouse or one that can catch a mouse
without hurting it. These are some
possible goals for an assignment/project.
In order to achieve the goal you define, you will probably need to
gather information briefly to investigate several areas. In our example you might gather information
from areas such as animal behaviour, technical configurations of current
mousetraps, materials used, users and homes, etc. Describe the areas you investigate, your
findings, and the importance to the direction of the project. Use citations to
indicate the sources of information you have used (books and publications) and
include these sources in your reference list.
From these areas you can define the results you want achieve. Using the previous example, results for the
mousetrap assignment/project could be a design prototype for a new mousetrap
that is based on an understanding of the natural behaviour of mice and
incorporates a new intelligent material to capture mice without harming
them. For an Industrial Design project
you have to test the prototype with users and make suggestions for improvements.
3 Design
The 3
following sections (Design, Technology & Users) constitute the basic
components of the assignment/project work. This section outlines the main
design work you have done. It should
include information on idea generation, concept development and design
detailing in the overall context of the projects goals. Specific design problems and issues should be
clearly described.
3.1 Idea Generation and Concept Development
In the
mousetrap example it would be obvious to include sketches of first design ideas
that illustrate the new mousetrap described in the objectives. The sketches should show a gradual
progression, becoming more refined and definitive as you move from idea to
concept. Also include several concepts and justify your choice for a clear,
final direction. This will lead you to
3D form studies and modelling to a final design model. Again, include a brief description of these
studies, the findings and the relevance to your final design model
3.2 Design Problems and Solutions
In this
section you should describe some specific problems you encountered during your
design investigations; a special hinge mechanism, the application of a new
material in the design, integration of a new shape to the mechanical design,
etc. Include visual material to
illustrate your design explorations.
4 Technology
4.1 Current Issues
Describe
the specific technologies you have been investigating during the course of the
project. What are the main technologies
involved in your product? What do you
know about these existing technologies?
What are the current problems with these technologies? What are the affordances? Again, use citations to indicate the sources
of information you have used (books and publications) and include these sources
in your reference list. This description
of current technology issues should form the starting point for this section.
4.2 Assignment/Project Goals
Describe
what you have done technically within the scope of the assignment/project. What technical solutions have you developed
yourself, what have you used or combined with other (existing) pieces to create
your prototype solution? What are the
main problems you have been dealing with?
What are the biggest risks? What
opportunities and advantages do you foresee with the technologies you have been
working with? What expertise did you
have to use from others?
4.3 Technical Configuration
This
section should describe the solution you have developed. Use diagrams and/or schematics to describe
the technical components and their relationships to each other.
5 Users
User
research is an important part of the assignment/project. You can start by describing the current or
expected users for the product you have been designing. Who might use the proposed design or has a
current need for it? What is already
known about these users (from literature or experts), and what did you still
need to find out for your project?
5.1 Assignment/Project Focus
Here you
should describe exactly what you want to achieve in your assignment/project
regarding user research. This means a
clear description of:
- Users and their needs, tasks, or current problem
- Potential / suitable research approaches
- Results you want to achieve
What
group of people will you investigating for your project? How will you locate and address end
users? How many users will you include
in your research? What are the main
questions to be answered regarding users for your assignment/project? What are potential user research methods to
get an answer to these questions? What
results do you want to achieve and how will you apply them to the design work?
5.2 User Research Approaches and Findings
In the
mousetrap example, there are various approaches you could take. You might be interested in finding out how
people work with current products. You
could do a study of users in the beginning of the project. You could also involve users in your design
process by having them react to design ideas or models. Alternatively you could complete the design
concept and test a working model to get input for changes or
recommendations. You might also opt for
a combination of 2 of these approaches.
Suggestion:
As time is restricted and user testing is very time consuming, the user
research cannot be extensive. You have to choose a method and a moment. Think carefully about what purpose the
research serves; for example, is it more important to see the reactions on your
first model, or to understand the user as a source of inspiration at the
beginning?
In this
section you explain and justify what method(s) of user research you have
selected. You describe what a particular method consisted of; when and how you
have used it in your project; the outcomes of your user research (and they
should give an answer to the questions you asked in the previous paragraph!);
and how you have applied these outcomes to your design work.
Some
examples of what to include in this section:
If you have designed a questionnaire you give a brief outline of the
questionnaire in this section, when and how you have distributed it, how you
have analysed research data, a summary of the findings, your conclusions (to
what extent do your findings answer the questions you have posed in advance),
and how you have applied the research findings to your design work. In an appendix you include the questionnaire
in full, as well as a complete overview of the answers and full analyses of
these answers. You may also include a few
questionnaires that have been filled in by users to show the types of responses
you received, if this has an added value.
If you
observe users or run a test, take videos of the session to include photos in
the report. You briefly describe what
the observation or test consisted of, when and how you used it, how you have
analysed the observation or test data, a summary of the findings, your
conclusions (to what extent do your findings answer the questions you have
posed in advance), and how you have applied the research findings to your
design work. In an appendix you include the observation or test schedule in
full, as well as a complete overview of the observation or test data and full
analyses of these data.
6 List of References
Sources of information are identified in
academic writing by citing and referencing. You cite the source in your text
whenever you quote, paraphrase, summarize, or copy someone else’s ideas as part
of your work, and by including the reference in the list of references
or bibliography at the end of your assignment/project.
Citing and referencing is not just done to
avoid plagiarism. When you cite sources, you demonstrate that you have
consulted appropriate information sources and that you are familiar with the
existing knowledge and ideas. Citing is pointing to evidence, authority, or
proof. In addition, you enable the readers of your work to consult the sources
you used and to verify your data: see next chapter "Citing, bibliographic references
and plagiarism."
7 Appendices
The main text of your project report should
be self-contained: it has to include all relevant information on your project.
Appendices, on the other hand should not include crucial information on your
project, only information that illustrates or elaborates issues in the main
text of the report. So information the reader might skip without a loss of
understanding of the main project issues.
If you use appendices in your report you
have to include a reference in the main text, together with a brief indication of
what a particular appendix contains.
Example
1:
Appendix
1 Contact Information Project Participants
In the
first appendix you should enumerate project participants and contact
information:
Telephone
numbers, email addresses, availability information
Example
2:
Appendix
2 User Questionnaire Concept Development Phase
This appendix contains the full
questionnaire you have used, for example, in the concept development phase of
your assignment/project. In the main text of your report you describe why you have used a
questionnaire (and not a different tool or method), how you have developed the
questionnaire (e.g. decision on the items you have included), and for the
complete questionnaire you refer to Appendix 2.
Citing, Bibliographic References and Plagiarism
Guidelines
and standards for citing and bibliographic references in (project) reports.
Academic Level versus Plagiarism
Sources
of information are identified in academic writing by citing and referencing.
You cite the source in your text whenever you quote, paraphrase, summarize, or
copy someone else’s ideas as part of your work, and by including the
reference in the list of references or bibliography at the end of your assignment/project.
Citing
and referencing is not just done to avoid plagiarism. When you cite sources,
you demonstrate that you have consulted appropriate information sources and
that you are familiar with the existing knowledge and ideas. Citing is pointing
to evidence, authority, or proof. In addition, you enable the readers of your
work to consult the sources you used and to verify your data.
To
plagiarize
- To steal and pass off as one’s own (the ideas or words of another)
- Use (a created production) without crediting the source
- To commit literary theft
- Present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
[From
Gove, Philip Babcock (ed.). Webster’s third new international dictionary of
the English language unabridged. Springfield,
Ma. : Merriam Webster, 1993. p. 1728]
People’s
ideas may be contained in written text (articles, books, websites, etc.),
visual text (illustrations, tables, etc.), multimedia products, music, and
spoken text.
If you
provide evidence in from of pictures, photos, diagrams, etc. and link to this
evidence, make sure that the source of evidence contain a copy right © notice
(i.e. © name-1, name-2, etc.) and the date (i.e., day-month-year) of creation.
Citing
In your
text, tables, illustrations you use (in-text) citations to identify the source.
In-text citation
When you
copy the words of someone else (quoting), you use quotation marks. For
example:
… as Spiekermann
(2003) states: “There are seven deadly sins, seven seas, and seventh sons of
seventh sons, but thousands of typefaces.” …
When you quote, paraphrase, summarize or
copy someone else’s work (i.e. text and/or pictures, photos, diagrams, tables,
etc) in your text, you must include a citation. That citation
refers to a reference in the list of references or bibliography. That can be
done in two ways (the chosen citation system defines the order of the list of
references or bibliography):
|
Citation
|
List
of References/Bibliography
|
|
Author-date
style
|
In
alphabetical order
|
|
Numerical
reference style
|
In
numerical order
|
Example of the author-date style in a text and the accompanying
list of references:
Text
. . . .The notion of an invisible college has been
explored in the sciences (Crane et al., 1972; Burchard, 1965). Its
absence among historians is noted by Stieg (1981a). It may be, as Burchard
(1965, p. 519) points out . . .
List
of references
. . .
Burchard,
JE. (1965). How humanists use a library. In Intrex : report of a planning
conference on information transfer experiments, Sept. 3, 1965. Cambridge, Mass.
: M.I.T. Press, 1965
. . .
Crane, D.; Westerborg,
E.; Schlesinger, ER. (1972). Invisible colleges. Chicago
: Univ. of Chicago Press
. . .
Stieg,
MF. (1981a). The information needs of historians : part 1. College and
Reserach Libraries, Nov. 1981, vol. 42, no. 6, p. 549-560
Stieg, MF. (1981b). The
information needs of historians : part 2. College and Reserach Libraries,
Dec. 1981, vol. 42, no. 7, p. 755-767
. . .
Example of the numerical reference style in a text and the accompanying
list of references:
Text
. . . .The notion of an invisible college has been
explored in the sciences [24]. Its absence among historians is noted by Stieg
[13]. It may be, as Burchard [8] points out . . .
or
.
. . .The notion of an invisible college has been explored in the sciences24.
Its absence among historians is noted by Stieg13. It may be, as
Burchard8 points out . . .
List of references
. . .
[8] Burchard, JE.
How humanists use a library. In Intrex : report of a planning conference on
information transfer experiments, Sept. 3, 1965. Cambridge, Mass.
: M.I.T. Press, 1965, p. 519
. . .
[13] Stieg, MF.
The information needs of historians. College and Research Libraries,
Nov. 1981, vol. 42, no. 6, p. 549-560
. . .
[24] Crane, D. Invisible
colleges. Chicago : Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1972
. . .
Citing an illustration, table, etc.
When you use illustrations, tables,
etc. of someone else in your report, you must include a citation. That
citation can be included in the caption of the figure, in the table
description, or in the part of your text that refers to that figure, table,
etc.
Example of a caption with citation
Figure 1. A worksheet fragment used in the Boothoyd
and Dewhurst DFA analysis of a product. (From Ref. [13])
or
Figure 1. A worksheet
fragment used in the Boothoyd and Dewhurst DFA analysis of a product. (From
Stone, 2004)
List of references
[13] Stone, R.B.; McAdams, D.A.;
Kayyalethekkel, V.J. A product architecture-based conceptual DFA technique. Design Studies, 2004, Vol.
25, No. 3, p. 301-325
or
Stone, R.B.; McAdams, D.A.; Kayyalethekkel,
V.J. (2004). A product architecture-based conceptual DFA technique. Design
Studies, 2004, Vol. 25, No. 3, p. 301-325
Bibliographic References
In the
examples of the previous section you already saw some bibliographic references.
There are different styles for bibliographic references, a.o. APA style, Harvard
style, Vancouver
style, styles recommended by journals and professional associations.
You
don’t have to use a specific style. However, the bibliographic references
should be in accordance with ISO 690 and ISO 690-2. An instruction on this
topic with a lot of examples is available on the website of the library TU/e.
URL: http://w3.tue.nl/en/services/library/services/bibliotheekonderwijs/e_learning_informatievaardigheden/
Examples of frequently used document
types:
Book
Yamaguchi,
G.T. Dynamic modeling of musculoskeletal motion : a vectorized approach for
biomechanical analysis in three dimensions. Dordrecht : Kluwer, 2001.
Website
Kirk-Othmer
encyclopedia of chemical technology [online]. 4th ed. [s.l. : John Wiley,
1992- . Regularly updated. [cited 20 Dec. 2002]. Available from World Wide Web:
<http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/kirk/>
Book Chapter
Jalkio,
J.A. The role of modeling in mechatronics design. In Bishop, R.H. (ed.).
The mechatronics handbook. Boca Raton
: CRC Press, 2002. p. 22/1-22/11
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