Design Step 5, 6, 7, 8

For these design steps, we focused on finalizing our experiments and design fixes. We put all of our work together into a report that showed our final design and testing results that showed the efficiency of our product. We then compiled a final slideshow of all of our work to present to our classmates, parents, and teachers. We made marketing material such as business cards, flyers, and a poster board to show off our product and encourage supporters to contact us if they liked our design. Our work in these final steps displayed all of our work we have completed on this project all year, and ensured that we could show off our effort to both the STEM board and San Marin. We presented our final product and findings to the San Marin community at the STEM Senior Awards night. We composed our poster, defense report, our marketing materials, our final slideshow, our test results, and our final product in a setup in the engineering classroom. As people walked around, we presented our product and answered any questions about the design or function of our product.

I believe that my group and I did a great job communicating and working together during these phases of our capstone project. We were able to fully concentrate on balancing the workload and utilize the knowledge we gained from our tests to improve our design and present our work. With a clear understanding of each other and the work we were doing, we were able to efficiently gather the information we needed to  complete our final product.  We all got along well, and I believe that helped us operate as a team.

 Overall, working on this project was a great experience. We had to take into account every engineering design stage in order to maximize the functionality of our product. This required having an in-depth understanding of the material and considering how it all fit together. Our class time was largely spent by just putting everything together, which required us to use our critical thinking and complete our work outside of class. We made good use of our communication abilities, in my opinion, in this assignment. We tried our best to express the work we had done every day and what still needed to be done because we had problems in previous steps.  This made it very easy to keep track of the project and put it all together in the end. I think we showcased what we have learned this year, and expanded our knowledge. 

While this is our final step of the capstone project, and I think we did very well, there is still room for improvement. I think that I could have worked on my conscientious learning. I believe that because we got along, it was occasionally challenging to give our actions serious thought. I also tended to struggle with time management, as we would sometimes underestimate how long the work would take because we had been performing so well in the past, thinking that it would be simple to complete. Despite having strong group communication, I can state that our teamwork wasn't the best. Although there was no fighting and our group got along well, I occasionally found it difficult to stay productive. But I believe that in the end, we persevered and worked hard till we finished, and I am proud of us. We can increase our productivity in the future by focusing on maintaining attention during class and cooperating with one another.