I was recently asked an excellent question regarding the EDN: How do you make sure that your notebook is detailed, while being short, concise, and having minimal fluff?
There’s been a number of posts regarding the notebook, and it has been mentioned multiple times to only include information with a purpose, but I haven’t found much of anything that addresses how to leave out fluff in a practical sense, so I thought I’d post this here to get everyone’s thoughts.
What is your team’s method of recording your design process in a way that is thorough, yet without fluff?
I’ll start.
First of all, I believe that the overall organization of the EDN itself is key to minimizing fluff.
Personally, I prefer to organize my EDN in a way that follows the steps of the design cycle. As well as following a logical order, it can also allow you to record only the information that is pertinent to that project.
For example, in a section on brainstorming and prototyping, I add less details on how to actually build the prototype, and instead, I include things like a simple sketch, potential problems, pros and cons, etc. Chances are, you’ll have a lot of unsuccessful ideas, and as long as you include enough information and hopefully a picture of the prototype, that should be plenty of information to look back on and see why it didn’t work. Too much information here isn’t really pertinent to the overall robot, as at this point in the design process, you haven’t even decided what solution to use yet.
Now, when you’re in the building phase of the design cycle, there are many more pertinent details that should be included in the notebook, such as precise measurements, materials, etc. To save time as well as minimize fluff in this area, I’ve often labeled a picture, which provides a clearer and less wordy way to show what you’ve done.
In keeping just the pertinent details, make sure to still include anything you’ll need to reference later on and everything mentioned in the rubric along the way!
Another way that I've tried to minimize fluff (this one may not work for everyone, depending on the schedule for working together, etc., but it worked well for me as I was a one-girl team) is to complete a small project before documenting it in the notebook.
I would only recommend this for projects that can be finished in a day or two, as it can be difficult to remember all of the specifics.
What I’ll do is take very detailed notes on a scratch piece of paper, along with pictures at each step. Then, when I sit down to record that project, I can often more effectively summarize the highlights. Moving a single screw isn’t major unless it was the key to a huge breakthrough, so it’s not pertinent to add a lot of this sort of thing in the notebook. Generally tell what all you tried, and then add in a picture of the end result. Having pictures of each step is great if there’s a lot of progress that has been made, but having multiple pictures where the changes aren’t even noticeable is just fluff. It would be better to leave a small note next to a picture to mention changes that aren’t noticeable.
What about code?
Adding your code to your notebook has a big potential for fluff. I only include short sections of code where I have currently made major changes in the notebook itself, and then I’ve opted to print the full current program for each competition and include it after the two notebooks I have in a binder.
Most judges are volunteers, and only a few understand programming, so taking up lots of pages to have your full code every time you make a change isn’t really necessary or helpful in the least. But definitely keep backups of previous versions on your computer or laptop!
A supplemental notebook for extra information?
In other threads, some have mentioned the possibly of a supplemental notebook for extra information. Personally, I believe that if the information is important enough that you need to add somewhere (in order to refer back to it in the future), it’s not fluff, and you’d be better off having this pertinent detail in your primary notebook instead of a second one so that everything stays together and in a logical order.
Also, having multiple notebooks is impractical for judging at competitions, especially if the organizational method is not well-documented. Judges don’t have long to look at each team’s notebook, and so any time that they have to spend figuring out how you organize your notebook takes away from the time they have to actually find the information listed from the rubric.
