You are required to keep an up-to-date design notebook throughout the term... this is an essential design practice that documents the history of your work. Notebooks are required in professional practice.

Your design notebook contributes to a significant portion of the individual component of your final grade. The notebook should be either a 8.5x11 spiral-bound book (to make scanning easier) or a standard-bound engineering notebook.

Use your design notebook to document all of your work and contributions towards your team's project. Do not use the notebook for lecture notes.

In practice, design notebooks are important legal documents. They should also be something that you are proud of... something that you could show to a potential employer. Notebooks are working documents, but they mush provide a comprehensible trail for your product development effort. Illegible notebooks will receive a failing grade. A few example pages from the notebooks of previous 2.009 students are on the right. You can click on the images to see the full sized pages.

Please be sure to write the date on each page when you make entries.

Your lab section instructor will review your notebook every second week during your lab period, as indicated throughout the course schedule (You can also access a list of the submission dates on the deliverables page).

Online notebooks:
Additionally, you will submit digital images of two pages from your notebook every two weeks, so that classmates can follow your contributions in two week increments. These submissions are used to make you an on-line 'highlight' notebook, accessible through the team pages. You may want to make special two week summary pages in your notebook for the online submission.

The online notebooks are a useful resource when working on a peer review.

Please review the detailed instructions on how to submit your notebook and your digital images.