The team began the design review by introducing design details, the structure and how it functions. Specific aspects of the design we focused on were the heat exchanger and the dampers. In addition, we presented where we planned to put the sensors in order to conduct data collection that we determined would best allow us to evaluate the performance of our prototype. Finally, we touched on the main functional requirements that we had previously laid out for our prototype during the concept refinement stage and how we planned to evaluate the performance of our prototype against them. The presenters had also written up the performance metrics that the team planned to use to characterize the performance of the prototype.
The team received feedback from the audience regarding insulation, data analysis, and evaluating the performance of the prototype. While we came into the design review with a plan regarding the sensors and what data we needed to collect, Professor Sabatino urged us to focus our attention on how we will conduct these tests, including which variables/metrics will be varied and which will be held constant. We discussed performing tests at different fan speeds, for example. Moreover, Professor Sabatino spoke to the team about how we will determine if our results indicate good performance or not and how we can get something meaningful from the data we collect. It was recommended that we determine what values or range of values for each of our metrics would indicate that our prototype performs well.