Presenting our System Level Design Report for ATOM is a major milestone for IPPD and marks the end of the fall semester! The SLDR is the culmination of our efforts and work this semester and we were so proud and excited to showcase it. After making many improvements and adjustments using feedback from our peer presentation, we practiced presentation flow, timing, and cohesion to ensure the presentation was as smooth as possible. Before the presentation, the Quarks had a chance to speak with other IPPD teams and learn about the professional world from other liaisons. It was a great opportunity to speak with veteran engineers from different fields who have so much experience and insight to offer. Showing off our SLDR and presenting all of the hard work we put in this semester was incredibly rewarding for the Quarks. We also had the privilege to watch Banary and Gear Guardians present their SLDR. As a fellow RTX sponsored team, we shared many events and milestones with Banary and watching their progress alongside ours was both insightful and encouraging.

It has been quite the rewarding journey for the Quarks. Going from strangers to teammates, creating our scope of work to presenting our PDR and now SLDR, and even the first prototype for ATOM. Although this semester is now over, we are not finished. The spring semester will see us enter the development phase of ATOM starting with initial test automation and functionality and eventually resulting in our final prototype solution.

We would like to give a special thanks to our liaisons Joseph Foraker and Alexander Good, our coach Cheryl Resch, executive sponsor Kathryn Frain, and all the IPPD staff who helped us along the way. This has been an amazing fall semester and we look forward to continue working in the spring!

After a successful week presenting our prototype for ATOM (Automated Testing Operations Monitor), this week we presented to our peers the current System Level Design Review (SLDR) for project ATOM. We had a few unexpected occurrences (the laptop died mid-presentation) but the Quarks still had a successful presentation! Additionally, some slides were overly wordy causing us to go over the time limit. The feedback we received was very helpful and easily actionable and these changes can be immediately implemented to improve our presentation. Feedback includes visual changes, reducing wording, better time management, and various clarifications on some of the technical content we presented. The team will be working on these changes along with any other improvements over the next week in preparation for the final SLDR presentation December 3rd.

As the semester nears its end and the Quarks prepare for the final presentation of the SLDR, we are starting to make objectives for both the user interface and framework teams looking ahead. Thanksgiving break will be used to improve our presentation and finalize the SLDR itself. After that, we are looking to complete and implement an initial test case, the UI team will begin work on the homepage, and the framework team will being automating the first set of testing processes.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Quarks!

This week we had Prototype Inspection Day! The Quarks were busy working on the prototype that was showcased to pairs of judges. Together the team presented wireframes that would represent the user interface of our proposed solution to the ATOM project. We had a great time showing off our progress together as a team and were grateful of all the feedback we received. A number of action items have been created based on this feedback to improve upon the solution. We split these items up among the team and have already started tackling them. The prototype wireframes are going to be sent to the testing engineers at RTX for additional feedback.

The SLDR is underway and the sections have been assigned throughout the team. The presentation for the SLDR is also being made including information from our PID and the new sections. We will have a good draft for the peer review presentation this upcoming week. Using the peer review feedback, we will finalize the SLDR for December 3rd.

While the UI team has put in a lot of work for the prototype wireframes, the framework team had its first team meeting today in the Hatchery to brainstorm implementation of the automated tests. Currently, we are researching existing automation tools.

This week we set up the Hatchery and turned on the machines with the help of our primary liaison, Joseph Foraker. The work stations will provide a secure area for us to develop the testing suite and we expect to start holding meetings here for the test framework team.

Work on the wireframes for our prototype is nearly complete. The wireframes will inspire the final user interface of the test suite and will showcase all the functionality we hope to include in our solution. The UI is sleek and offers a dark color palate to be easier on the eyes. Although we are excited to share our progress, we can only reveal what we have done during our PID next week. The framework and UI teams are in the process of scheduling sub meetings to start brainstorming and shorty after that, development. The testing processes we received are being analyzed and we have a better idea of how to start automating them. From this, we also gained some insight on how to approach allowing the user to add their own tests in the future.

Also this week, the Quarks met with their coach to discuss midterm evaluations. We received good feedback on how to improve moving forward and what we might need to work on. Overall the whole team is doing great and we are progressing quickly. We’ll see you after PID!

Things are moving quickly for the Quarks this week. Since we’ve gained access, we have been exploring our new workspace The Hatchery, and getting used to the new area. Our final PDR is completed and has been signed off by the team and our liaisons. The feedback we received was extremely helpful and has guided us when considering how to approach our project prototype, specifically how technical or non-technical the solution will be. Prototype Inspection Day is a little over a week from now and we have made lots of progress on the wireframes that will representing our solution. The wireframes showcase the various pages of the application including the home page, test selection page, and test report page. The Quarks have also split into two teams, one for the front end UI design of the application and the other will handle the back end framework.

Last but not least, we have received testing procedure resources from RTX and we will begin analysis on it right away! This will be a great look into how testing is carried out and how we can best implement our automated solution. We also got matching polos provided by RTX!

This week was our on-site visit to RTX to present our PDR! Together, with team Banary, we traveled to Largo and gave our PDR presentations to our liaisons and other members of the RTX team. In the days leading up, we practiced our presentation and made any final tweaks from the peer review session to improve it as much as possible. The presentation went very well and we received valuable feedback and questions from our liaisons and audience. Banary presented second and also did great! We were able to see how their presentation changed since the peer review session and the feedback they received. After the presentation, we had lunch with the sponsors and it was time for the tour! We had an amazing time touring the site and talking to all of the wonderful people at RTX. A on-site PDR presentation feedback memo was also completed based on comments and questions received on-site.

This week we also got access to the Hatchery! The Hatchery is a workspace at Innovate where a local environment is provided for us to begin development on ATOM. Having this workspace will be incredibly beneficial and very exciting for the team.

Special thanks to Joseph Foraker, Alex Good, Kathryn Frain, John Kennedy, and the rest of the RTX crew for hosting us this week.