Research Writing for Engineers
Ultimately for this course you’ll work with a team to write a formal proposal for the development, marketing, and distribution of a new engineering product or service. Your proposed creation can either be an improvement on an already-existing product or service or a wholly new idea.
In either case, you will have to
See below for more information about each of the sections of the assignment.
The first element of your proposal is a market research section. It’s important to do market research because it demonstrates that you understand the context, competition, and customer base your product or service will be dealing with. In other words, it demonstrates that you’ve done your homework – that you’ve learned from the lessons of other products similar to yours (or that you’ve learned enough to know confidently how novel your idea is). This process involves gathering a considerable amount of information and will require the involvement of everyone in your team.
In some contexts, marketing studies can run hundreds of pages. For this class, that may be a bit extreme; you should aim for several pages (including charts, graphs, etc.), although what constitutes “several pages” will vary. You should also treat this research as an important step in refining and thinking about the actual design of your product. It may develop, modify, or shed features as a result of what you find out in your market research.
As a starting place, here are a few general questions:
Who are your customers?
How much will it cost to make your product or offer your service?
Other things to consider:
You will need to divide the work across multiple members of your team in order to accomplish it all. Below, I’ve listed specific roles you should use to divide the work of this section of the project:
Competition and Intellectual Property
Customers and Pricing
Distribution and Sales
Legal Requirements and Approvals
If you’re doing extra work, for this section, I’m asking you to produce a justification and self-assessment that explains why you believe you deserve to have your work counted as “extra.” How did you go above and beyond the standard expectations of the prompt? What additional tasks or responsibilities did you take on? In what way does your design section stand out, and how did you contribute to that? You should also evaluate the contributions you made – would you say you did your best work? Why? What did you learn during the process, and how did you put it into practice?
Include your self-assessment with your marketing section draft as a separate document in your individual folder. Here are some examples of work that might qualify for extra work in this section, organized by role:
Competition and Intellectual Property
Customers and Pricing
Distribution and Sales
Legal Requirements and Approvals
The market research sets the stage for the work of the design section. Using both text and graphics, this part of the proposal describes how your proposed product or service works, including
The engineering design section of your proposal should also include appropriate supporting graphics.
You will need to divide the work across multiple members of your team in order to accomplish it all. Below, I’ve listed specific roles you should use to divide the work of this section of the project.
Design Description
Materials Selection
Manufacturing Process
Testing and Quality Assurance
Design Description
Processing
Distribution
Billing
Testing, Quality Assurance, and/or Post-Sale Service
If you’re doing extra work, for this section, I’m asking you to produce a justification and self-assessment that explains why you believe you deserve to have your work counted as “extra.” How did you go above and beyond the standard expectations of the prompt? What additional tasks or responsibilities did you take on? In what way does your design section stand out, and how did you contribute to that? You should also evaluate the contributions you made – would you say you did your best work? Why? What did you learn during the process, and how did you put it into practice?
Include your self-assessment with your design section draft (either as a separate document in your individual folder or at the end of the design section draft).
Formatting: Use a readable typeface, either 10 or 12 point, single spaced, with block paragraph formatting.
References: Cite ALL researched data using a standard (APA, IEEE, or Chicago) format. References should appear either in a dedicated “References” list.
Style: Focus on being concise. Your audience will, in general, not want to spend much of their valuable time reading a proposal full of unnecessary prose.
Structure: Remember: this is not an essay, it’s a proposal! Ask yourself, “If I was a business manager or investor and wanted to find specific information, could I do so within a few seconds?” If the answer is yes, then you’re on the right track. Use plenty of white space in your formatting, along with appropriate headings. These should visually stand out in the text by enlarging the font, bolding, italicizing, underlining, etc., and help readers navigate your proposal. Wherever possible, use bullets, tables, charts and graphs, and other aids to understanding the material.
Data: Don’t forget to explain your data and findings. One of the hardest lessons to learn – in writing in general and STEM writing in particular – is that facts DO NOT speak for themselves. It is your job as knowledgeable writers to outline a chain of reasoning for your reader, and to help them use the data to come to the same conclusions you have. To do that, explain the source(s) and how the selected data fit into your marketing strategy and overall proposal.
Visuals: Title and number all tables, figures, graphs, etc. (e.g., “Table 1: Per Capita Cheese Consumption,” “Figure 2: Exploded Diagram of a Muffin”). Refer to these in your text by their number: E.g., “Table 5 demonstrates the correlation between cheese-producing states and cheese consumption.”
Certainty: Do away with ambiguities and uncertainties. Words like “probably,” “might,” and “maybe” should not occur often in your proposal. Your tone should be decisive and resolute: “We intend to produce a soy-based coffee substitute that is a delicious approximation of traditional coffee,” not “Our soykaf will probably convince consumers they’re actually drinking coffee.” “Adamantium will be used for all tensile members,” not “We may consider using adamantium.” Your possible plans are significantly less valuable to potential investors.
Appendix: Your final proposal may include an Appendix for extra materials that help explain your product or service. This extra material can be cited in various sections of your final proposal, including the engineering design section. For example, if your product is a gas-powered coffee maker, you might call out a specific motor and its key specifications in your engineering design section, then include any downloaded product materials in your Appendix, e.g.:
“After a rigorous product review of DC motors, the Baldor ModelX123 motor was selected for the final design of the DieselCuppaJoe. With a torque of X Newton-meters, yet drawing a minimum amperage of Z A., the Model X123 seems ideally suited to the demands of a high-pollution coffee maker. The motor includes a 24-month OEM factory warranty, which supports our design objective of providing an unconditional, one-year product guarantee. For detailed manufacturer specifications of the Baldor Model X123 motor, see Appendix A3.”
