1. EDGE™ Preparing a Poster for a Publication and Display Prepared by Edward Hensel Copyright © 2005 Rochester Institute of Technology All rights reserved.

2. EDGE™ FACET Cycle as Applied to Planning and Preparing Your Poster  FORMULATE –  Prepare an outline of your poster.  Use the poster templates for outlining and initial layout  ASSUME  Think about your audience and what background they will have when reading your poster.  What assumptions must you make to provide a good poster for both a high school junior and a senior engineer?  CHART  Prepare compelling graphics  Use action photos and video to show  EXECUTE  Compile your poster materials, develop the electronic format  TEST  Ask someone unfamiliar with your project to give you feedback on content, clarity, readability, image quality, graphic layout, and technical level  Anticipate Questions at the poster session  ITERATE  Modify your poster as needed based on feedback  Print and mount the poster and deliver it to the poster session manager

3. EDGE™ General Comments Review several posters in the hallways There are lots of great examples to learn from Your poster will be viewed by upwards of 2,000 or more people during the next year The poster audience is VERY broad –Peer students –Faculty members and Project Sponsors –Practicing engineers at Sponsor Organization –Lower division undergraduate students –Prospective Students and Their Families The poster is probably the “highest profile” publication that you will create during your entire time at RIT as an undergraduate, in that it will be the most widely read. Copyright © 2005 Rochester Institute of Technology All rights reserved.

4. EDGE™ Poster Format The poster format is 20"x30" portrait (20” wide and 30” tall) A poster template is available in the downloads section. Use full color, and lots of graphics Print and mount one copy for display in the hallways of the Gleason Building (at RIT Cost) Print and mount one copy for delivery to your sponsor for display in their facility (at RIT Cost) You may make additional copies for each team member (at Your Cost) if time permits, and after all teams are done printing their required posters You may use your electronic copy to make additional copies off campus in larger or smaller formats as well

5. EDGE™ Typical Senior Design Poster Contents Title Block –Title, Team Number –Authors and Affiliations –Date Overview of the design project, with objectives listed in bulleted or outline format Summary of your design results from SD 1 – Illustrate your alternative concepts considered, and focus primarily on the engineering drawings and analysis of your chosen design. performance specifications Show an exploded view assembly of your solid model, critical circuit diagrams Show the results of your design analysis and simulation results (e.g. Spice, Finite Element Analysis, or O/R Models) Demonstrate that you applied appropriate math, science and engineering principles in your design analysis. Engineering Model and describe your fabrication processes Photos and imagery of the Physical Embodiment of your Engineering Model Illustrate the testing apparatus and methods used to assess performance of the engineering model Key Results and Finding from Test & Evaluation of your Engineering Model Summarize the results of your Engineering Model tests against your Desired Outcomes and Project Deliverable Specifications Conclusions - Articulate which of the original design goals were and were not achieved Recommendations – in more summary form than you would have used in the conference paper Where can the reader find more information? Point them to your website… Acknowledgements

6. EDGE™ Use Color to get your point across  Red – Excitement, Intensity  Blue – Truth, Justice  Orange – Action, Optimism  Green – Expansion, Growth  Yellow – Confidence, Wisdom  Purple – Royalty Sophistication  White – Professionalism, Newness, Innocence  Black – Authority, Strength  Gray – Integrity, Maturity

7. EDGE™ The Title Block When you read the title … what do you anticipate will follow? What is the poster about? Is it primarily analytical, numerical, or experimental in nature? Who else do you think would be interested in this article? Be specific with your title, but not too wordy. A good title is no more than about 10 words long. 20 words is too much, and 5 words probably is not specific enough. Every author should be listed with their departmental affiliation. Your mentor, coordinator, sponsor, etc. should be listed if and only if they were a direct contributor to the work described within. If you relied on their support, but they were not directly involved in the project design, they should more appropriately be listed in the acknowledgments vs. as an author. Use graphics – show a photo of the team, not just their names!

8. EDGE™ The Introduction & Background The background section will be more abbreviated here, and have less detail than your conference paper. In bullets, or using graphics, convince the read that you are solving an important problem. You need to be writing to a broader audience for the poster, so the background motivation will need to be more generic. What is the motivation for this work? Who else has contributed to this field of research, based on the citations presented herein? Your poster should point the reader to your web site or some additional location where they can get full details of your project

9. EDGE™ Theory / Analysis / Model / Experimentation Outline the mathematical development, but probably not enough space to fill in al the details – you may simply show some key results Put lots of emphasis on experimental data results and interpretation Make sure your units (dimensions) are correct – an error here calls all of your efforts into question. Demonstrate to the reader that you did or did not meet your design objectives as realized by your engineering model. Be up front – tell them what parts were successful, and what parts were not successful

10. EDGE™ Experimental Results / Data Is the description of the experimental apparatus sufficient to allow you to reproduce the experiment? Were the sensors, signal processing, and data errors described and quantified? How did the data compare against the theory presented in the paper, or against theory presented in another paper, or vice-versa (was analysis herein compared against data presented elsewhere?). Do you understand the errors associated with the data presented?

11. EDGE™ Results and Conclusions Do the results presented follow logically from the analysis, experiments and correlations with the work of others? Do the conclusions presented follow logically from the results and their interpretation? Would an unbiased reader agree with your conclusions? Would your argument convince a skeptical reader of your conclusions? If not, how would you modify the conclusions or your logic?

12. EDGE™ Recommendations for Future Work Could a peer take your recommendations, and truly use them as a foundation for starting the next generation of the design project? Have you articulated not only what should be done, but what resources would be necessary to accomplish those tasks (people, money, time, etc) Are your recommendations for a subsequent single design project, for a series of three years, for transition to a commercial product, or what? Does your customer support your recommendations?