Design and Communication

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Design and Communication
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Engineering is Design

• Much of your training
• Analyze how something works
• But in your career dont want to analyze someone
  elses creation ? make your own
• Design!
• Still need to analyze choices
• But design is harder
• Requires creativity ? no one right answer
• Requires breadth ? solve problems that span many
  areas

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Design is a Process

• Some flashes of inspiration
• But more hard work!
• Agile development
• Design approach well use

Prototype
Refine
Test Evaluate
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Communication

• Crucial to your career
• Communicate
• Within your team (informal, fast)
• To your management (more formal)
• To clients / customers (why should they choose
  you?)

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Design and Communication Importance
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I. Getting a Job

• Your transcript do you know the basics?
• Resume interview
• Can you design / problem solve?
• On a problem you have not seen before
• Can you communicate?
• My favourite interview question
• What is your proudest design achievement?

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II. Starting a Company

• Summer 2014 mentored 2 U of T hatchery students
• Design smart, heated clothing for skiiers
• Many iterations (washable, feedback control,
  comfortable)
• Communication
• Indiegogo campaign why do you want this?
• Final pitch won the 20,000 Lacavera Prize

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III. Building a Company

• Co-founded start-up to create better
  Computer-Aided Design Tools for FPGAs
• Design better software
• 30x faster (8 hours ? fifteen minutes)
• Circuits ran 38 faster ? charge twice as much
  for chips

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III. Building a Company

• Design Altera paid 2M for prototype software
• Offered 10M more to buy company
• Communication presented to CEO COO
• You have the wrong chips for our software
• Let us design the chips software
• Altera will make billions ? pay us much more than
  10 M!

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IV. Building a Better World

• Tesla Motors
• Design
• Re-imagined re-designed the electric car
• Communication
• Made electric cars cool
• tesla battery swap
• Concretely shows how Tesla has overcome a weakness

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Course Goals Overview
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Course Goals

• Gain design project management experience
• Including team-based design
• Focus software design
• Enhance your communication skills
• Written oral
• Make it clear, concise, compelling
• Learn more complex software development
• All engineers write software today

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Basic Learning

• Lectures will cover principles and key skills
• Design (Vaughn Betz) communication (Paul
  Barrett)
• Course much more difficult if you dont attend!
• Course text on creating Sticky Messages
• Clear and memorable
• Expected to know lecture material book
• Tested with questions in presentations weekly
  meetings

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Deeper Learning

• Deeper learning is through doing
• Develop a complex C software application
• In a team of 3
• Four major development milestones
• Communicate effectively
• 2 major written documents
• 2 oral presentations
• The more effort you put in, the more youll learn

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Design Project Mapping Application
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Mentoring and Evaluation

• Detailed grade breakdown in syllabus
• 50 on design / coding (communication helps!)
• 50 on communication (helped by a good design!)
• No midterm or final exam
• Mentored by a TA
• Engineering grad student
• Represents engineering manager, evaluates design
• Mentored by a CI
• Communication Instructor
• Represents client / project manager, evaluates
  communication

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Major Milestones

• Milestone 1 choose / code data structures
• Written Doc 1 graphics proposal
• Milestone 2 graphics
• Oral 1 graphics presentation
• Milestone 3 find paths
• Milestone 4 courier company route
• Written Doc 2 Final Report
• Oral 2 Final Presentation

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Design First Two Weeks

• Learn key software tools (milestone 0)
• Show a TA you know how to use them
• 2 of final grade, done individually
• Labs start today!
• Going through the tools / tutorials fully will
  help you greatly during the project
• You will work on the ECE ug machines
• Login is your utorid
• Initial password is your student number
• Change password with passwd right away!
• Can work remotely using vnc
• Can also download a virtual machine for home

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Third Week Beyond Work in Team

• Form team of 3 by Friday, January 15
• Must be in same lab time slot (not room/section)
• Will also be in same tutorial time slot
• Choose wisely!
• Same work ethic
• Complementary skills
• Can get along
• Team selector and list of students per time slot
  on course web site at www.eecg.utoronto.ca/vaughn
  /ece297

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Third Week Onwards

• Meet with your TA during your lab time slot
• Every week
• Prepare written status report, on a wiki page (3
  of final mark)
• List specific actions, and who owns each
• Get feedback and/or ask for help
• Some weeks demo your design / be evaluated

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Third Week Onwards

• Meet with your CI at a mutually convenient time
• May be during your tutorial time slot
• Every week, unless cancelled by CI
• Go over written status on your wiki page (another
  3 of mark)
• Get feedback on design documents and
  presentations as you develop them
• Some weeks will make your oral presentation

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Tutorials

• First 2 weeks tutorials will teach more advanced
  C
• Templates
• Standard Template Library (STL)
• Some knowledge of STL necessary to complete
  project
• To communicate with the support code we give you
• More knowledge of STL makes project much easier
• Can create basic data structures much faster ?
  finish program more quickly
• You should attend!

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Academic Integrity

• General discussion is OK, copying is not
• All reports will be run through turnitin.com
• All code will be run through an automated program
  similarity checker
• Both copying and allowing copying will be
  penalized
• The Code of Academic Discipline will be strictly
  enforced
• Integrity takes a career to build and a moment
  to destroy.
• Misha Burich, former CTO of Altera

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Resources Advice

• Your CI and TA are there to mentor you ? ask for
  help!
• Piazza discussion board
• Ask anything, but dont post code / solutions
• Anytime you find me, you can ask a question
• Or email for an appointment
• Dont fall behind
• Milestone 0 due by Friday, Jan. 15 _at_ 5 pm
• Have team chosen by Friday, Jan. 15
• Written Document 0 due by Friday, Jan. 22 _at_ 5 pm

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Feedback

• Tell us about any issues / improvements
• In person or email
• Or by anonymous feedback link on course website
• Mistake bounty
• Point out a mistake in a lecture ?
• 3 mistakes in 1 lecture ?
• for everyone next lecture

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Communication First 3 Weeks

• Communication integral to design process
• Read Made to Stick
• Join a team, meet your CI
• Watch Google Photo Presentation
• (Not the entire thing 10000 11300)
• Get started on WD0 (Due Fri. Jan 22 _at_ 5pm)

Paul Barrett
ECE 297
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Paul Barrett
ECE 297
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Story, Concrete Curse of Knowledge

• These examples illustrate key points from MTS
• STORY is a key component of sticky ideas.
• Concrete examples are stickier than abstract
  ideas
• The story of the wedding invitation will stick
  longer with greater clarity than the studies
• Curse of Knowledge When we know something, its
  difficult to imagine not knowing it. How do we
  communicate to a non-expert audience?

Paul Barrett
ECE 297
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Written Document 0 Key Points

• Identify 3 Principles of Made to Stick
• How do these make the presentation effective and
  memorable? Or argue that they dont
• Argue for an improvement using the principles
  from Made to Stick
• Use full sentences, paragraphs and lists where
  appropriate.
• Be concrete in your analysis
• 400 600 words

• Getting Started
• Read MTS with a pen
• Create an index of relevant quotes
• Develop a list of questions / critiques
• Watch the presentation
• Draft, revise, revise again

Paul Barrett
ECE 297
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Paul Barrett
ECE 297
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