Week 7/8 – Miles

Research Poster Critique:

I decided to critique the Purdue Utility Project: Clutching Mechanisms poster, since it is built off the same vehicle as my project.

At first glance the poster is well organized and easy to read. The layout is arranged in a logical way; top to bottom for easy transitions. It is visually appealing, with strong use of color, graphics, and white space. No words are too small to read, and the table has shading to help keep each section separated.

As far as the content of the poster, it definitely gets the point across. The introduction, impact and goals sections are to the succinct but complete. You get the idea that they want to design a clutch to put on utility vehicles that they are building for people in remote areas of Cameroon. Content overall leaves nothing to the imagination, which is perfect.

The poster title: Purdue Utility Project: Clutching Mechanisms, perhaps leaves some people in the dark if they don’t know what the Purdue Utility Project is. But the University and Department are clearly visible so that was well done.

It may be that the project itself is so interesting, a basic utility vehicle for transportation in Cameroon, which causes the poster to capture your interest right away, but the poster is certainly presented well with an eye-grabbing BUV pictured top center. Of course, once the attention is there, the project sells itself with an innovative design and philanthropic purpose.

Overall, this was a great poster and can easily be used as an example of what a research poster should look like.

Project Update:

To remind everyone, I’m working on designing and fabricating a hydraulic system to attach to the BUV. I have selected a solution, which was to build the system from the component level, instead of the best alternative which would have been to rearrange the components of a log splitter, which has most of the same necessary components. I have ordered the parts, which is exciting. Hopefully they come in soon so I can start attempting a build.