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The System Design Project is a Semester 2 module and is a group project involving construction of an item of significant complexity under conditions designed to give insights into industrial teamwork.

It is a double-weight module (course) with coursework through the semester and an intense period of construction activity at the end of the semester (weeks 10, 11). Assessment details, learning outcomes etc. can be found in the Course Descriptor page

The System Design team

• Paul Ardin (Teaching Assistant) s8528002 (at) sms.ed.ac.uk
• Garry Ellard (Technician) gde (at) inf.ed.ac.uk
• Vicky Swann (ITO Admin contact) Vicky.Swann (at) ed.ac.uk
• Henry S. Thompson (Course Organiser) ht (at) inf.ed.ac.uk

The Project

Details of the 2013 project can be found in the course guide. See also the lecture slides.

Groups

Here is the list of groups for this year

Schedule

• 09.00–10.00 Wed 16 Jan 2013, 7 Bristo Sq LT 1: Introductory lecture and Demo
  • Introduction
• 11.00–12.00 Fri 1 Feb 2013, 7 Bristo Sq LT 1: Communication Skills 1.
  • Writing
  • Scripts
  • Video of lecture
• 11.00—12.00 Fri 1 Mar, 7 Bristo Sq LT 1: Communications Skills 2.
  • Fundamentals of giving a research talk

Communication Skills—resources

• William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, Longman, 1999 (Fourth edition), £4.71 from Amazon.
• Free Online Edition of William Strunk, Jr.'s 1918 original.
• Donald Knuth, Technical writing.
• George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, from Inside the Whale and Other Essays, Penguin, 1969.
• Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, Penguin, 2004 (Third revised edition.)
• Max Atkins, Lend Me Your Ears: All you need to know about making speeches and presentations, Vemilion, 2004.
• David Allen, Getting Things Done: How to achieve stress-free productivity, Piatkus, 2001.
• Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 2001 (Second edition).
• Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, 1990. (Challenger is discussed on pages 38–52.)
• Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence, Graphics Press, 1997. (Powerpoint is discussed on pages 156–185.)
• Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.
• Randy Pausch, Time Management.
• Bret Victor, Inventing on Principle.
• Bret Victor, Magic Ink.
• TED Talks.

REPORTS

Please submit milestone reports using submit to the ITO by the appropriate deadline, as follows:

> submit sdp [n] [your filename]

Where [n] is the milestone number and [your filename] is the name of your report file. The report filename must be group-[g]-individual-report.{html,pdf} if it is your individual report or group-[g]-group-report.{html,pdf} if is is a group report. All reports must be in either (X)HTML or PDF.

Always keep an untouched copy, preferably in a repository (git, mercurial, svn, cvs, . . .), of every report you submit.

For group reports, each group should designate a member to submit on their behalf, signalled as such in the filename. It is the whole group's resposibility to see that the report is submitted on time and per the requirements, not just the designated individual's.

A sample feedback given to one of the group reports by Dominik Glodzik: Feedback from Dominic Glodzik

ROBOT Football Rules and Regulation

• Here are the robot football rules and regulations  that we will be using. 

Final Day

Final Day schedule.

The main presentation and tournament day is Wednesday 3 April and you will have access to lecture theatre G.07 in the Informatics Forum for rehearsal all day on Tuesday 2 April

Presentations slots are 15 minutes including questions and changeover, not 20 minutes. You should plan your talk for no more than 10 minutes.

Further Information

The SDP wiki (https://wiki.inf.ed.ac.uk/SDP/WebHome) is where you will find a wide range of useful and important links relating to the hardware and software aspects of the course.

In particular, the code developed last year and in 2011, as well as some reports from those years, is linked from the wiki.

Notifications about course activities from the course team will be sent by email, using the sdp-students@inf.ed.ac.uk mailing list. Questions can be raised on that list, or via the SDP forum. Less formally, there is a Twitter feed for the course.

Feedback on the course

Feedback is always welcome and Informatics provides a central online feedback form (or you can mail the course leader, your mentor, or the class rep.) Have your say!