Design Laboratory

Edition: Winter semester 2022/2023.

The Design Laboratory is a course where you have to establish a team, propose the design, and realize it. The main focus of this course is not the design itself, but the labor around the project. You will have to plan how to split and organize the work in the team, keep a log of your tasks, and document your work progress. The design itself is a secondary objective, but a wise design choice is crucial for a smooth journey through the semester.

During the coursework you will be required to use following software tools as a part of your workflow:

• git for source code management,

• Forgejo for web user interface for git and project management system.

If you are attending this course, please read this whole page carefully. In the case of any ambiguity in the content, it will be discussed at the introductory meeting.

Table of content

Staff

The laboratory staff consists of one lab instructor that will supervise you during the project. The table below lists the information about the laboratory staff as well the contact information.

role	name	room	office hours	e-mail address
lab instructor	Szymon Woźniak	C2-420	Wednesday, 10:30 - 11:30	szymon.wozniak@agh.edu.pl

Office hours & e-mails

If you are interested in attending office hours, please announce yourself one day earlier by sending an e-mail to the laboratory instructor. In the e-mail message, you should specify the aim of your visit by briefly describing your concerns, problems, et cetera.

You must tag the e-mail message by adding the following string [design-lab] at the beginning of the e-mail's subject. Example subject: [design-lab] Konsultacje na temat różnic w fazie.

Note that for any correspondence with the laboratory staff, you should use your student e-mail provided by the university. The laboratory staff does not reply to messages from domains other than *agh.edu.pl.

Organization

In this section, you will find some details about laboratory organization. There are 14 meetings in the semester and three types of them. Types are as follows Introductory meetings, Proposal working meetings, and Project meetings. Most of them are in the form of consultations, where students discuss their project progress with the instructor. In the following parts of this section, there is a short description of each meeting type. Lastly, the schedule of laboratory meetings is presented.

Introductory meeting

The introductory meeting consists of two parts. The first one makes an overview and discussion of the organization of the lab, the grading policy, and the work organization during the semester. Next, we will talk about design expectations. The second part of this meeting will shortly discuss a version control system (git) and a simple project management system embedded within gitea, which teams will use during the semester.

This meeting is in the form of a seminar.

Proposal working meetings

These two meetings are in the form of seminars or consultations with the laboratory instructor. The meetings aim to help students prepare a suitable project proposal.

Students should come to this meeting with preliminary design ideas they would like to implement in this course. The design ideas will be presented by students and discussed in the group. It is recommended for preformed teams to prepare a draft version of the project proposal document.

Each student is committed to attending at least one of the two Proposal working meetings. Students are required to register in advance for each meeting. The laboratory instructor will communicate at the Introductory meeting the registration method.

Project meetings

Project meetings are weekly meetings of the project team with the instructor to discuss progress, plan the immediate steps, or consult. Meetings are individual per team. Since the meeting duration might be relatively short, teams should be well-prepared.

Each team is committed to attending at least eight of the eleven Proposal working meetings. Teams are required to register in advance for each meeting. The laboratory instructor will communicate at the Introductory meeting the registration method.

Schedule

The winter semester consists of 17 weeks. It allows us to realize all planned (14) meetings. The first meeting focuses on the introduction and organization. Next two will concern project proposal. The remaining meetings are allocated for the project meetings. Additionally, the following notation was applied for dates:

• Strike-through dates indicate canceled meetings due to various reasones.

Week	Lab nr	Date	Subject
01	01	2022.10.03	Introductory meeting
02	02	2022.10.10	Proposal working meeting#01
03	03	2022.10.17	Proposal working meeting#02
04	04	2022.10.24	Project meeting#01
05	-	~~2022.10.31~~	No classes due to academic year schedule
06	05	2022.11.07	Project meeting#02
07	06	2022.11.14	Project meeting#03
08	07	2022.11.21	Project meeting#04
09	08	2022.11.28	Project meeting#05
10	09	2022.12.05	Project meeting#06
11	10	2022.12.12	Project meeting#07
12	11	2022.12.19	Project meeting#08
13	-	~~2022.12.26~~	Winter holidays
14	-	~~2023.01.02~~	No classes due to the rector's directive.
15	12	2023.01.09	Project meeting#9
16	13	2023.01.16	Project meeting#10
17	14	2023.01.23	Project meeting#11

Grading policy

The laboratory uses a standard university grading scale, beginning with 2.0 as a failing grade and passing grades from 3.0 to 5.0 with a progression of 0.5. It progressively denotes students’ performance from satisfactory to very good. The final laboratory grade is calculated based on the grade coefficient $\sigma$. In the following paragraphs, you will learn how to calculate this coefficient and the final laboratory grade.

During the semester, you will acquire points for performing graded tasks. The table below lists grade segments and deadlines.

$i$	Grade segment	Segment scope	$\psi_i$	$\Omega_i$	Deadline
1	Proposal	Team	$0.10$	10	23.10.2022
2	Work progress	Team	$0.15$	5	-
3	Individual coefficient	Individual	$0.25$	14	-
4	Project result	Team	$0.25$	50	12.02.2023
5	Project report	Team	$0.25$	40	12.02.2023

The contribution of the $i^{\text{th}}$ segment to the grade coefficient $\sigma$ is given by $\psi_i$, while $\Omega_i$ denotes the maximal amount of points of the $i^{\text{th}}$ segment. The assessment of the whole project is divided into five separate segments. Each segment is either in individual or team scope. The points within individual segments are assigned to each student and are based on individual performance. So as a result, each person within a team can obtain a different amount of points in those segments. On the other hand, points within team segments should be a result of collaborative effort and therefore each person within the team will receive the same amount of points. Deadlines are strict and exceeding the deadline is penalized by halving the points per each day of being late. The laboratory grade coefficient $\sigma$ is calculated as weighted arithmetic mean using the following formula

$$\sigma = \left\lfloor P \cdot \left( \sum_{i=1}^{5} \frac{\omega_i}{\Omega_i} \cdot{} \psi_i \right) \cdot \left( \sum_{i=1}^{5} \psi_i \right)^{-1} \right\rfloor ,$$

where $\lfloor \cdot \rfloor$ is the floor operator, $\omega_i$ denotes the number of points that the student got from $i^{\mathrm{th}}$ segment, and $P$ is a grade coefficient. The value of the grading coefficient is $0 < P \le 100$, and it's set based on the project proposal.

Each team must submit a proposal, a result, and a report to be eligible for a passing grade.

The final laboratory grade is strictly determined by a grade coefficient $\sigma$ and the table below presents the dependency between the final laboratory grade and a grade coefficient.

$j$	Final Grade	Interval
1	2.0	$\sigma \in (-\infty, 50)$
2	3.0	$\sigma \in [50, 60)$
3	3.5	$\sigma \in [60, 70)$
4	4.0	$\sigma \in [70, 80)$
5	4.5	$\sigma \in [80, 90)$
6	5.0	$\sigma \in [90, +\infty)$

The grading scale is the same as the AGH's study regulations require (article 13, "SKALA OCEN").

Honor code

You can use any books, papers, references, and publicly available implementations for ideas and code that you may want to incorporate into your project. However, you must clearly cite all your sources in your write up and source code. Under no circumstances are you allowed to look at another group’s code or incorporate their code into your project.

The project must be a result of work done by the team. Contributions of third-party are not allowed.

If you are combining your project with the project from another course, you must receive permission from the laboratory instructor. In addition, you must provide:

• Clear explanation in the proposal and report the exact contributions carried out in this project.

• Separate reports for each course, and submit them as well.

Team formation

The project must be realized as a collaborative effort within a group of students. The permissible number of students in a team is up to four people, while the recommended number of students in a team is two people. The team should be formed by students with similar knowledge, technical skills, and coinciding design idea.

The number of students in a team should be appropriately matched to the workload that design requires. Keep in the mind that the larger the team, the more time will be needed to organize its work. Also, it will be more difficult to organize work well and efficiently.

The official team formation is done by sending a project proposal to the lab instructor.

Project details

In this section, you can find details about expectations from particular project segments.

Design expectations

Teams are free to choose a subject of their design as they please. However, there are some constraints.

First and foremost, each design must solve some practical problem using engineering techniques. The outcome of the project must be evaluable in a well-defined, repeatable, and deterministic way. For example, designing an aesthetically pleasing user interface for some tool, where aesthetics are paramount, will be not a good design idea. In contrast, designing an ergonomic user interface that provides specific functionality sounds better, and its aesthetics may be an advantage.

Secondly, the design should be simple, since the team must complete it within one semester. The total workload per team member to complete assigned work is about 75 working hours. Note that this does not imply that the project design can be trivial. It is advised to use or combine at least a few engineering techniques in your project.

Note that any two teams must not carry out the same design.

Proposal

The project proposal is a document that tells what you are planning to do for the project. It introduces and discusses the design idea, formalizes the subject of your project, set your goals, and organizes your work. The potential reader of the proposal should acquire a good understanding of your design idea and the plan for its realization. The proposal must be no longer than six double-column pages with a font size of 10pt, and it must be written in the English language. It is required to use a specific template for the document.

A well-written proposal should include the information listed below but is not necessarily limited to:

• Project title

• List of team members

• Good introduction and background material on a problem you are solving with your design. Make a short discussion about why the problem is important and/or challenging in general but wider context

• Clear and precise problem formulation (or specification) with objectives

• A brief description of how you plan to solve it

• An approximate timeline of work (please refer to weeks from the laboratory schedule).

• Two milestones and a statement, as clear as possible, of what you want to accomplish by each milestone and by the end of the project.

• Preliminary division of labor between the team members

• Technology stack with a short discussion about the choice

• References

The organization of this document is at the discretion of the team and does not need to be done in the above order. However, the specified pieces of information are necessary and should be included.

The complete proposal should be sent to the lab instructor via e-mail massage by the deadline. The deadline for the proposal can be checked in the table, in Section Grading policy. The file format of the document must be Portable Document Format (PDF). Other formats are not accepted and will be automatically rejected.

As a result, the team will obtain proposal coefficient $\omega_1$ and proposed project grade coefficient $P$. The proposal will be graded according to the following criterion:

• Introduction, topic review, discussion (20%)

• Clear problem statement (15%)

• Preliminary approach description (10%)

• Project plan (20%)

• Completeness of the proposal (15%)

• Writing and formatting (20%)

Work progress

The work progress segment corresponds to the overall realization of the project plan and consistency of the work throughout the semester It takes into account how well the team is able to:

• Plan and realize minor (incremental) tasks between laboratory meetings.

• Realize milestones from the project proposal.

• Adjust the design as it develops to mitigate potential bad design choices.

Be aware that productivity is usually inversely related to the time until the deadline. So try to not fall into Student's Syndrome.

Individual coefficient

Regardless of the overall team performance and the result, each team member undergoes an additional individual assessment during the semester. The individual coefficient corresponds to the individual contributions of the team member to the project. The assessment is based on commitment, contributions, quality of contributions, activity during laboratory meetings, and how well and clear a team member presents carried out contributions.

It is important to state by each team member their incremental contributions to the project during the laboratory meetings. The discussion should concern what was done and how. Under no circumstances should fail to complete tasks be left out of the discussion. As a matter of fact, failures should be even more thoroughly discussed than successes.

Keep in mind that it is important to divide the work more or less equally among all members of the team so that everyone can prove themselves.

Result

The result is the outcome of the project. It is a realization of the design idea from the project proposal. There are no direct requirements listed here since it's the team who puts most constraints on the design in the project proposal. The most important question is whether the project meets the design objectives, and it's the core for assessing the result. Further evaluation of the outcome will depend on the nature of the project itself. The identified issues in the result will further affect the assessment.

It is highly recommended to maintain the quality and clarity of the project during implementation. Plan the structure of the project so that it makes logical sense. Use meaningful names in your project so that a bystander doesn't have to guess too much about what a particular element or variable is used for. Provide short auxiliary comments in your project so that one can deduce more quickly what a given block implements.

The team should make available the result to the lab instructor by the deadline. The deadline for the result can be checked in the table, in Section Grading policy. The team may be requested to present and discuss the result in person after submission if the assessment requires it.

Report

The report is a summary of your design idea and a description of the result that team produced. The main aim of the report is to introduce the potential and not familiarized reader to the problem, approaches to solve it, and evaluation of those approaches. It should also be a kind of own work review. Remember that the report should be neutral about the project. Reject the idea that you did the project and don't be afraid to criticize things that you think require it. Keep in mind that the report is not detailed documentation of the project describing every functionality. The write up should be self-contained and be structured similarly to a conference or journal paper. The report must be no longer than 15 double-column pages with a font size of 10pt, and it must be written in the English language. It is required to use a specific template for the document.

The following is just a suggestion for the scheme of the report, but it should be a good starting point for most projects:

• Header: It should contain the project title and author’s names.

• Abstract: It should briefly describe the content of the report, i.e. problem, approaches, and main results. There should be no more than 300 words.

• Introduction: Good introduction and background material on the problem and the design. Discussion and try to refer to literature related to the problem. It should extend the introduction from the project proposal.

• Problem formulation: A clear and precise formulation of the problem.

• Methods, approaches, solutions: Describe and discuss approaches you decided to implement. Explain the reasons why you selected those particular methods. Compare pros and cons.

• Evaluation: Describe and discuss the evaluation you performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the employed methods. Define and explain evaluation metrics. Determine the impact of various components of your system.

• Conclusions: Summarize your project. Distinguish key results.

• Contributions: State precisely the contributions of each team member.

• Changes: Describe differences and changes in the initial design from the proposal.

• References: References to the literature.

The description of each bullet point is a suggestion of what is expected, but it should not limit the content of the report. Since it's the team's burden to write a report up, the team has the right to compose the report in another more suitable manner for the project. Keep in mind that a well-written proposal is a great starting point.

The report should be sent to the lab instructor via e-mail massage by the deadline. The deadline can be checked in the table, in Section Grading policy. The file format of the document must be Portable Document Format (PDF). Other formats are not accepted and will be automatically rejected.

As a result, the team will obtain coefficient $\omega_5$. The report will be graded according to the following distribution:

• Introduction and background (20%)

• Description of the problem, solution, and evaluation (60%)

• Report organization (10%)

• Writing and formatting (10%)

Template

The documents each team has to prepare must use a specific template, i.e., the project proposal and the final report. Currently, the only accepted template is the so-called IEEEtran, a template created by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for some IEEE journals.

Templates that you must use are available here. Please do not use others. Two template file formats are available:

• $\LaTeX$ document class with accompanying sample of source code for document.

• .docx file that is compatible with WYSIWYG editors like LibreOffice or Microsoft Office.

When preparing the document, do not forget about:

• Fill in the missing information in the header of the document, by adding the proper course name and current academic year.

• Fill in the information in the footer on the first page of the document. Put there the contact information for all authors, git.spclass usernames, a field of study, and a faculty. At the end of the footer, state who was the supervisor of the project.

• The biography of the authors is not mandatory, but it's recommended.

It's highly recommended to use $\LaTeX$ for the best quality of typesetting. Citing:

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents.

Preparing the environment on your computer to create documents using LaTeX is not difficult. Yet, it requires a moment if you are doing it for the first time. On the other hand, you can use Overleaf, a cloud-based service for the preparation of the $\LaTeX$ documents in a collaborative manner. The university provides access to its paid features. More information about it can be found here. To access your University's account at Overleaf, you have to sign in by the Institutional Login page with your student's credentials.

FAQ

If you have any question that is not listed below, feel free to message laboratory staff.

• I have sent an e-mail to the laboratory staff, but I still didn't receive a reply. What can I do? The staff usually replies in the next 24 hours, but it also can take longer depending on the day. Also, check if you followed the guidelines listed in section Office hours.

• I didn't receive passing grade. When will retakes take place? Due to nature of the class, there are no retakes.

Changelog

• 2022.12.20: Minor fix to the schedule.

• 2022.10.24: Minor fix to the schedule.

• 2022.09.28: Honor code added.

• 2022.09.28: Office hours update.

• 2022.09.28: Location of first meeting change.

• 2022.09.28: Document published.