Your Folio

Your folio is a curated journal that shares your thinking, your learning, your hardships, and your successes. It explores your processes, your overall goals, and the steps you took to achieve. Not every sketch, technical drawing, or piece of code will go into your folio, but enough to show your research, decision making, processes, progress and final summation of your project.

Your SAT is assessed across eight criteria, and six of those relate to evidence that you have applied the Systems Engineering Process to create your integrated and controlled system. What that means is that you're going to be documenting, a lot.

Structure

There is no one way to structure a folio, but it must document the entire project. You could move through sequentially, you could start with your intention, and then explore your final design, followed by the processes. There is no formula, there is no definitive way to create your record of evidence, but it must make sense. It should tell a story.

Capture Decisions, Reward Mistakes

If you're not making mistakes, you're not being an engineer. The best part of your documentation is that you do not need to show perfection. You need to highlight what went wrong, explain why, and justify what happens next. You get to explore every bad choice. You burned out a component? Awesome! Write it down, and explain how you know you messed up. Explain what you learned, and what you will do in the future.

Your folio is not about right or wrong. It is simply a factual record of what has happened, and your response to your circumstances. The components you ordered have not arrived for three weeks - what have you done with your time?

Your SAT is not a one and done project. You should have multiple versions, from a concept model, to a working prototype, to test system one, through to wherever you get to. The folio covers all aspects of it.

You will earn higher scores based on the thoroughness of your documentation and the justification of your design choices based on your experiences.

Things in your Folio

Your folio will include:

• An intention
• A design brief
• Images
• Videos
• Annotations
• Reflections
• Sketches
• Models
• Simulations
• Detailed, Scientific Tests
• Circuit Diagrams
• Parts lists
• A work plan
• Cost breakdown
• Technical Drawings
• User Research
• Component Research
• Goals
• Mistakes
• Explanations of your system, subsystems, circuits and components
• Design Options
• References to your design brief
• References to the Systems Engineering process
• Mechanical calculations
• Electrical calculations
• Annotated Code samples
• Risk Assessments
• Heirachy of control
• Prompts you engineered for Large Language Models
• Evidence that you have considered Ethical Design
• Identification of Factors that Influence your design
• Justification of design choices based on influencing factors, ethics, design brief, reflections, testing data, manufacturing processes, and errors.
• Justifications of redesigns
• Justification of use of AI
• Critiques of AI output
• Critiques of your practices
• Critiques of processes
• Evidence of safe work practices
• Evidence that the system has been created by you
• Evidence of prototyping
• Evidence of implementing agile design principles
• References to research sources
• References for Creative Commons and Open Source materials
• References to tutorials that you watched or read
• Material Safety Data Sheets
• Electrical Component Data Sheets
• Evaluation of your designs, circuits, models
• Evaluation of the entire system, including testing metrics
• Evaluation of your application of the Systems Engineering Process
• Success criteria derived from the design brief
• A clear evolution of your project
• Explicit links between goals and final performance
• Constraints
• System specifications
• Input and Output Tolerance
• Expected Lifespan
• Expected wear
• Maintenance
• End-of-life considerations
• Tools used
• Change logs, version history