Technical Poster Guidelines

CREE is requesting a technical poster and presentation from each engineering company that discusses the design iteration, testing, and overall final project submission. Professionalism in the formatting, written text, and presentation is important, as this is being presented to your client who is tasked with selecting the winning company for the job.

Virtual Poster Presentation - Friday July 30th, 1 PM - 4 PM

Presentation Guidelines

Your company will give a poster presentation to the entire Cluster 4 students and teaching team using Zoom. Teams should strive to summarize their poster content, while pointing out any important or interesting details. Presentations should be short and concise, staying within 5 minutes (you will be cut off at the 5 minute mark). The poster is a visual aid for the presentation and should not be read directly. Each person should be ready and capable of presenting their entire poster. You should also be able to field questions from other audience members when your presentation is finished.

Refer to the poster presentation guidelines taught to you in Science Communication here.

Time will be given for poster presentation practice on Friday July 30th in the morning session before final presentations in the afternoon.

After each company's poster presentation, students will be randomly called on to ask the company a question based on their presentation. So be engaged and prepared to ask a question if you are called upon!

Zoom Presentation Instructions

  • Share your screen with the poster

      • Designate who will be sharing screen and controlling the mouse/zoom

      • Zoom into each section as you discuss it so your zoom audience can read the text and view the images

      • Use the mouse to hover/circle over the information you are presenting

      • Take turns presenting, but give each other an equal amount of presentation time

  • Wear business casual

General Zoom Presentation Advice

  • Do not chew gum or eat while presenting

  • Keep hands out of pockets or don’t have something in your hand that you can play with

  • Get the audience hooked on your project before going into detail, so provide a two-sentence overview

  • Speak and look to your viewers, don’t just read from poster

      • Make eye contact to your camera

  • Do not refer to notes or read a script

      • To avoid this, practice, practice, practice!

Design-Build Technical Poster Content

Your company technical poster must include the following sections:

Graphics

These graphics can be located anywhere on the poster as needed:

  • At least two 3D renderings of your Wind Turbine Tower from OnShape (two different views)

  • At least two photographs of your final Wind Turbine Tower

Project Overview

  • What is the project about?

  • What are the learning objectives?

  • What is your company's objective or goals?

  • Which team member was the lead for which part of the project?

Prototype Iterations

  • Provide at least one photograph of your prototype designs and/or conceptual sketches for each the TOWER and the BLADES.

  • Describe your design intents for each prototype.

  • Explain what you learned from testing and how it influenced your final design.

  • You can break this into subsections if you wish, such as Prototype 1 and Prototype 2, or Tower Prototypes and Blades Prototypes, etc.

Prototype Testing

  • Describe your testing procedures for both the TOWER and the BLADES.

  • Provide at least one image showing your testing set-up for both the TOWER and the BLADES. Alternatively, create a computer graphic image showing your set-up. Be sure to label your image with the appropriate distances and equipment callouts.

Final Design Performance

  • Provide a summary describing your final Wind Turbine Tower design choice.

  • Discuss your final testing results, including failure modes for the tower, energy output for the blades, and final Performance Index score.

  • Provide images of your hand-drawn Engineering Drawings.

Conclusions

  • What were the challenges for the project?

  • What did you learn from this project and what would you recommend to teams in the future?

  • What would you do differently if you could start over again?

Acknowledgements

What makes a good poster?

  • Effective use of graphics, color and fonts

  • Important information should be readable from about 10 feet away (or in this case, when looking at the computer screen)

  • Title is short and draws interest

  • Word count of about 300 to 800 words

  • Text is clear and to the point (be concise!)

  • Use of bullets, numbering, and headlines make it easy to read

  • Use of captions for ALL tables, figures, or images with references to the captions within the text (see example to the right).

  • Consistent and clean layout

  • Includes acknowledgments, your name and institutional affiliation


Poster Creation Reminders!!

Refer to the poster content guidelines taught to you in Science Communication here.

General Reminders:

  • Dimensions of the poster are 48” wide and 36” tall (no exceptions)

  • A 1-inch margin must be maintained around the entire poster perimeter.

  • Fonts: Any font style is acceptable as long as it is readable. Commonly used fonts are Arial, Franklin Gothic, Century Gothic, Tahoma, Trebuchet, and Verdana.

      • All caps shall only be used for titles, subtitles, and section headers, if desired.

      • Titles shall be ¾” to 1” tall, which is typically a font size between 72-100 points.

      • Subtitles shall be ½” to ¾” tall, which is typically a font size between 48-80 points.

      • Section headers shall be approximately 50% larger than body text, which is typically a font size between 36-72 points.

      • Body text shall be a font size between 24-48 points.


  • Title: Format your title per the following image:

  • Within your title, please place the Jacobs School of Engineering logo on one side and your company logo on the other side (see team 45 example in the next section below)

  • Download the JSOE logo here (PNG files have transparent backgrounds).

Example Student Posters

These posters are from an undergrad course at UC San Diego and represent the design expectations for the COSMOS poster.