Reports, design course writing

Write a short (one paragraph) audience analysis for a design report in your design course. 

When I coach students writing long technical reports for a senior design project or business plan course, I find that there is a tendency to write overly long sections that are not broken up into subsections. This is a mistake because it makes it harder for busy business-technical readers to skim the text and find what they need. A key element of good business writing is to break up documents into reasonably sized pieces with appropriately chosen headings or titles. 

Other usefiil classes include writing and speech (for reports and presentations) and a simple business course. Those wishing to work in research and development need a feel for how things work and some level of creativity. Those working in quality control may need to design tests that demonstrate that a device works and that it will continue to work reliably. 

With regards to the design report itself, it was observed that additional student exposure to design writings was needed. This took the form of example report sections, written by the second author, that were shared with the students. While these helped, they did not alleviate the experience shortfall or the students apprehension with preparing the design report. New possibilities will be explored before the course is offered again. 

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