Your engineering notebook is the story of your season — every idea, every test, every "well, THAT didn't work." It's also what judges read when they're deciding the judged awards. Here's the part most teams get backwards: judges don't want perfect. They want real.
What goes in it
After every practice, write down:
- What problem you worked on — "our robot kept dropping the block"
- What you tried — sketches, ideas, the plan
- What happened — including the failures! Crossed-out ideas are good
- What you'll try next
Date every entry. Photos and drawings count. Messy-but-honest beats neat-but-empty, every single time.
What judges actually look for
Judges read your notebook with the official rubric, and it rewards three things: your design process (problem → idea → test → improve), your documentation (can they follow your story?), and your project management (how your team planned and shared the work). What they're told to value is the journey — your ideas, your ownership, your learning — not how pretty it looks or how thick it is. A notebook clearly written by students, showing both wins and failures, is exactly what wins.
One more secret: complete notebooks — ones that tell the whole season's story — are the ones in the running for the big judged awards. A notebook you only wrote the night before the tournament tells on itself.
The notebook and the interview go together
Judges read your notebook and talk to your team. Know your own notebook — bookmark your favorite page, the one with your best idea or your most spectacular failure, and be ready to show it off.
Turning it in
At some events you hand your notebook in at check-in; at others (remote-notebooks events) your coach submits it online before the tournament — miss that deadline and judges can't read it at all. Ask your coach which kind your event is, or point them at our coaches' guide.