A Field Guide to the Design Event
A word of caution: this is one judge’s opinion, checked by a small group of other judges. While the following advice may help you if you’ve never competed in the design event, DO NOT consider this to be a definitive source of truth. Another caveat is that I have only judged in North American events, and I’m sure there are differences for FSG, FSUK, etc.
The core of the following came from one of my old posts on reddit, and I’ve incorporated the best comments. Thank you u/probablymade_thatup, u/s_oneill, and u/hokey_pokey.
The following article covers the preliminary design event at competition, but our evaluation of your vehicle starts with your design report, whatever its form. Those reports aren’t merely an arbitrary step in your registration process - we do read the reports, and they are our first impression of your team and vehicle. Be sure to check out Justin’s article.
Knowledge & Scoring
When we approach a team in the design event, judges are typically looking to have a conversation with students about how the vehicle was engineered. Different judges have different styles, so that conversation will vary.
When you’re presenting to the judges, you should be prepared to discuss things going back to first principles of whatever is driving the engineering of a particular subsystem, whether that’s the achievable friction force at the tire patch or mass air flow through the restrictor. Keep asking yourself why until you can’t go any deeper.
If you have something in particular that you’d like to discuss with your judge(s), make sure you mention that early on in the conversation. We try to check in when we have about ten minutes left to see whether there’s anything you’d like to chat about, but sometimes we get caught up and lose track of time.
Don’t get caught up on what particular score sheets are being used for a given competition. Like this article, they should be regarded as guidelines. The score itself will very rarely match the number of points that your team is actually awarded, because at the end of the preliminary design event, we’ll normalize the queue scores to a letter grade loosely corresponding to the following.
Finalist - We didn’t have enough time to fully explore a team’s depth and breadth of knowledge, and the only way we get to continue the conversation (for points) is if we send them to design finals.
A - The vehicle engineering fundamentals are sound, but there are a few loose ends to tie up. If feedback and coaching is taken seriously, an A team could make it to finals in the next competition.
B - The team has missed some engineering fundamentals and needs a fair bit of coaching to get on track and two years to be a finals team.
C - Lots of engineering fundamentals were missed. We may start feedback and coaching during the preliminary design event, but we have some technical topics to chat about first.
D - You’ve made it to competition with a car. This is a big accomplishment. Let’s get right to work talking about the big steps your team can take next.
The design event captains and queue leads then normalize scores across all the queues so that teams are scored fairly regardless of which particular judges they spoke to. Those letter grades will then be converted back into points that are actually awarded. We know the process isn’t perfect, but it works well given the personnel and time constraints we have to work with.
Media & Presentation
Well organized binders are what a lot of design judges prefer as a presentation medium. It’s typically windy at Michigan and Lincoln and really crowded in the DJ event, so poster boards more often than not get in the way and impede our ability to inspect the vehicle and have a conversation with a team. Computers can be used for animations of select items, but I wouldn’t use them as the primary presentation tool. They’re not as reliable as paper and are typically slower for information retrieval relative to a well-organized binder. Also, putting together the binder is a very good way to review the work you’ve done to date – think of it like a reference sheet for a test. If you take the time to put one together, a lot of times you don’t need it to remember the info that you need to.
Don't have all 50 of your members huddled around the car. It is hard for the judges to judge a car they can't see or get to. Prior to competition, identify who will be leading the conversations with the judges and who will support them. This is a team event and we expect to talk to more than one person to get all of the information we’re looking for. Make sure those leads know who to call on when they need to.
You should have at least a high level understanding of the systems that interface with whatever your area of expertise is. If you as a suspension/vehicle dynamics person don't have any idea about the basics of your aero package, then you couldn’t have considered all of the proper design requirements and constraints.
So how many leads should you have ready to talk to the design judges? Unfortunately, that depends on the competition, where there may be anywhere from three to eight judges in a queue. You’re going to have to triage just as we have to, and generally, the following is how the categories are sectioned out:
6 or more: Suspension, Aero, Frame/Body, Cockpit/Controls/Brakes, Powertrain, Systems Management/Integration with extra (usually rookie) judges doubling up or shadowing veterans, and others doing a deep dive into things like electronics.
5: Suspension, Aero/Frame/Body, Cockpit/Controls/Brakes, Powertrain, Systems Management/Integration
4: Suspension, Frame/Body/Aero, Cockpit/Controls/Brakes, Powertrain
3: Suspension, Frame/Body/Aero, Powertrain
You’ll see that Manufacturability/Serviceability, Aesthetics/Style, and Creativity aren’t directly evaluated even with a full contingent of judges. For these categories, we will convene at the end of our hour together to come to an agreement on these scores collectively. We’ll do something similar for any categories that we don’t focus on when we’re shorthanded, or have one judge cover multiple topics such as having the suspension judge cover brakes.
Electrical wiring and circuit board teams: Be prepared to present to mechanical engineers.
Electrical FSAE graduates: We need you more than anyone in EV online document review, EV tech inspection, and Low and High Voltage Design Judging. Please contact us to get involved.
Some other pointers:
Take a moment to glance at your judge's name tag and note their employer, as it may give you an insight into their knowledge of a topic and can save you time explaining some concepts.
SPEAK UP. It's loud in here, and many of us work or have worked around very loud vehicles, whether they be professional racing cars, rockets, heavy machinery, or our own side projects. We may not admit it, but many of us have sustained hearing damage at some point in our lives. (Don’t be like us. Wear hearing protection and other personal protective equipment.)
Bring water, you'll likely be talking as fast as you can for the entire time.
It’s polite to ask your design judges before recording your judging session if you choose to do so.
You may need multiple people who can speak to a single topic, especially if that subsystem interacts with several others. For example, you need more than one person and laptop with testing data ready to present to different judges in parallel (all of this data should already be printed in your design binder).
Lastly, you can buy printers for very cheap (>$50) with a 2 week return policy from many big-box retailers. A backup is a good idea and speeds things up in preparation.
Your Car
Make sure your vehicle is prepped and showroom ready. All fasteners should be appropriate lengths. Safety wire trimmed and wire ties properly cut with flush cutters so we don’t slice ourselves inspecting your car. You will lose points if it draws blood. Things like that.
Appoint someone with a jack and tools that can take off bodywork, wheels, covers, et cetera. That's a good job for an underclassman that will be presenting the following competition, so that they are physically in the middle of the design event and understand what the format is. This will help to keep the conversation moving when we have very limited time together.
The car should also be CLEAN. Don’t worry about scratches and wear from testing the vehicle – we actually want to see that the car has been driven before you present it to us. But make sure you don’t have gravel and dust everywhere, grease or oil smears. If you demonstrate that you have attention to those sorts of details, you’ll make a good first impression on us. We start evaluating the car and team as soon as we see you entering the garage – not when the team lead starts their introductory spiel. And if we see the car isn’t well kept, we’ll be more likely to look for other things that are out of place, which negatively affects the score we’ll give you, and not just in the aesthetics category. Poor vehicle condition spills over into poorer scores for aero, chassis, suspension, etc.
Treat it Like an Interview Because it Is
Along the lines of first impressions – come groomed. Shower. Brush your teeth. Shave. Make sure you have mints and check your teammates for halitosis. We’re people too and are subject to the psychology of personal presentation. If you look professional and put together, we’ll score you higher than a team that smells of BO and the Natty Light they were crushing the night before.
I have hired the top performers for internships and full-time positions, and I know that I am not alone. Recruiting is one of the reasons we volunteer as design judges, second to a desire to give back to this community that we all credit with much of our professional success.
What’s Next?
Good on ya for making it to competition and for having the guts to lay out years of work for evaluation and criticism. If those conversations have gone particularly well, we’ll be seeing you in Design Finals, which will have its own field guide.
Make sure you take advantage of the feedback sessions. Take notes. Record video or audio if your judges are willing (most will be). If you don’t have a chance to chat at competition, don’t be shy about reaching out to schedule a remote follow-up.
Lastly, don’t forget that you can ask us anything here at DesignJudges.com. If the technical editors can’t answer your question, we’ll happily seek out someone with the knowledge you seek.
