The goal of design review is to help us TAs track what you are doing and
point out potential mistakes as early as possible. We want to make sure
that you can finish the project before it's due so you have time to catch
and resolve design errors and avoid frustrating last-minute debugging.
We don't mind mistakes at this stage; we encourage them.
For design review, you should have seriously thought about all aspects of
the project so you have a clear idea of what you are going to do.
It is a good idea to have started some coding at this stage and for you to
have investigated what tools will be necessary and have them working.
When you meet with one of us TAs, please have prepared some pseudocode,
a flowchart, or whatever else you think appropriate in order to demonstrate
your plans. Depending on the project, we might also want you to provide
running code, or answer questions.
Your design review will be graded from 0 to 5. To conduct a graded design
review, each working group or student will meet with a TA for 10 minutes
one week before the project is due.