For this project I worked with Iain Griffin to produce different methods of helping students study and learn the ME544 Materials Engineering System.

Iain’s website is available here: https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/designengineeringiain/

 

About the ME544 Materials Engineering Module

The ME544 module is about studying the different materials and their properties. Different laboratory sessions and lectures and within this module are currently used to teach students about stresses, strains, beams, bending moments shear moments and many other topics.

 

The Aim

For this project our aim is To provide resources, formats and information to help study the ME544 Materials Engineering Module.

 

Discussing the Project

The biggest problem for this project is boredom. If you just gave them a paper full of text it wouldn’t be appealing, interesting and the reader would get tired of reading the text and would not take in the information. Therefore myself and Iain thought it would be best to provide the information in more interesting ways. Before we began the project, we discussed the different resources, formats and information which we could provide to aid people with studying the module.

We agreed on using these concepts:

• Posters – Showing and Explaining  the different machines and how they are used to obtain data and used to produce certain graphs
• Leaflets/Flyers – Providing Information about the module, including valuable formulas, graphs and other information
• An All-in-one Excel Spreadsheet – For the Laboratory Sessions, a single spreadsheet that can be referred to or used as a template for student work
• A potential Video – perhaps as a guide to the laboratories

 

The Objectives

After discussing the project and the potential solutions we set three objectives. These were:

• Research into producing professional Posters, Leaflets and Videos
• Produce posters of each machine used in the ME544 module
• Produce an All-in-One Excel Spreadsheet for all the laboratory sessions within the module

 

Deliverables

Website/Portfolio/Presentation. User Requirements, Assigning Tasks, Initial Posters, Researching into ways of Improving Posters, Updated Posters, leaflets, and an Excel Spreadsheet (on Iain’s website).

 

User Requirements

Before producing the posters and leaflets we also discussed the user requirements which were essential for the resources to be effective.

• The information needs to be easily understandable and readable
• The information needs to not become boring to read or look at
• The information needs to attract and intrigue the person studying the module
• The resources needs to be easily used
• The resources need to be widely accessible
• The resources need to act as a guide to its specific topic

 

Assigning the Tasks

After agreeing on the concepts and the user requirements, we decided to split and assign the different tasks. This was so that we could have an equal share of the work as well as a more efficient group effort.

DOWNLOAD: Tasks

 

Researching ways of Improving the Posters

During the creation of the posters we researched into different ways of making a good quality poster. We also spoke with one of the technicians who operates the machines to gain an insight into what could be useful for the user. We did this so that we could improve the poster and also spend as little time as possible on making those improvements. If we didn’t do this I believe that we would have wasted a lot of time and we could have potentially made the posters worse.

An example was to not use borders, by doing this it will create large white spaces that help to space out the text. Another way of improving the poster is to make the writing and images uniform and neat. This means lining up all the text, images and titles. This allows the reader to read easier and understand the poster better.

Being specific but keeping concise also allows you to free as much space as possible for more information. Having specific words bold and a different colour to show importance also helps the reader.

 

Here are the references we used:

University of Birmingham. (2021). Tips for effective poster design. Available from: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/metallurgy-materials/about/cases/tips-advice/poster.aspx

UNC, University Libraries. (2022). Designing Effective Posters. Available from: https://guides.lib.unc.edu/posters/home

 

Posters

I was tasks with making the torsion testing poster and the Charpy impact testing poster. We worked together to ensure that the posters had a similar design so that they are a collection rather than individual work.

 

Initial Torsion Testing Poster

DOWNLOAD: Torsion Testing Poster

This is the initial design. Originally it had borders around the writing which ultimately made the poster look like there wasn’t a lot of white space on the page. The lab 2 exercise work was also included for students learning the module but felt unnecessary. The title and subtitles were bland and they didn’t stand out, also there wasn’t much contrast to make the poster more appealing to the eye.

 

Updated Torsion Testing Poster

DOWNLOAD: Updated Torsion Testing Poster

After realising the worst parts of the initial poster I used the different ways of improving the poster to add new, more appealing and more useful information.

The first thing that was changed was the title and the subtitles, I made them bold and all the same font. This made them stand out more. Secondly I removed the Lab 2 exercise from the bottom. This freed up a lot of space and we ultimately decided that the posters should be about the machine and the work should be left to the laboratory sessions.

The coloured borders were also removed as they made the poster seem very cramped and packed with information. A graph was added in place of the lab 2 exercise to show what could be produced from using the machine. Some useful equations have been added to help understand the graph.

 

Charpy Impact Testing Poster

DOWNLOAD: Charpy Impact Testing Poster

This is the initial design for the Charpy impact testing poster, once we worked out the design for one poster we then moved onto the others, we have tried to replicate the design so that the posters are a collection rather than individual pieces. We felt that this would be better and more efficient as we could translate the design rather than coming up with a new design from scratch.

 

Joint Editing of the Tensile Testing Poster

During this project we worked together to finish up and change the tensile testing poster which Iain had started producing. We collaborated to make the poster more uniform and technically competent.

DOWNLOAD: Tensile testing poster v2

 

Leaflet

For this project we agreed on developing a leaflet that provides a brief insight into the ME544 Materials Engineering Module, it discusses the laboratories and the lectures. Also it provides some useful equations for the reader.

I took the same approach to this as the posters. I researched and talked to technicians and teachers to gain advice and potential areas of improvements.

DOWNLOAD: ME544 Leaflet

This is the second version of the leaflet, the first didn’t feel specific and didn’t seem to helpful to the reader. This design focuses on a single topic rather than cramming everything into one, here the laboratory sessions were also removed. This is because they are being covered in the All-in-one Excel Spreadsheet which Iain has produced.

DOWNLOAD: ME544 Leaflet 2

On the back is a section on beam theory, we thought that this would be helpful to the reader and it would also give the reader a glimpse of what is included with the module.

DOWNLOAD: ME544 Leaflet 3

We found that this was too similar to the lectures and therefore the leaflet again changed. Instead the leaflet showed an application of beam theory and how it can be used to solve potential problems in the real world.