Part I — VEX IQ Fundamentals · Chapter 11
The Engineering Notebook
Where your team thinks out loud so the thinking doesn't disappear.
Your notebook isn't paperwork for judges. It's where your team thinks out loud so the thinking doesn't disappear. Judging criteria gets its own chapter later, this one's about the two jobs your notebook actually does every week.
A Design Tool
Write down the number, not just the call. A decision with no number attached can't be checked again next season.
One speed, 1200 RPM, ran every roller on the robot. It burned motors out early because splitting the drivetrain motors from the intake cut torque to each roller. The notebook is where we worked out the fix, drop most rollers to 900 for torque, leave the front intake at 1800 since it only ever pushes a ball that's already stuck.
Record what you rejected too. We tested odometry pods on that same robot and wrote "weighed the pros and cons, decided against it." That one sentence is what stops someone from re-testing the same dead end two seasons from now.
Team Memory
This season's mistake is next season's shortcut. A notebook only pays off if someone actually goes back and reads it.
The two real team-memory examples that go here are still placeholders in the manuscript and haven't been dropped in yet.
Neither fix was a new idea. Both were just someone flipping back a few months and reading what already happened.
Structuring a Shared Deck
A shared slide deck doesn't stay chronological on its own, ours doesn't either. Some slides go up after every meeting, some only when something big changes, a few just sit there getting updated all season. Sort them on purpose or the deck turns into a scroll nobody can search.
Every slide gets a title, a name, and a date. That's the only rule that keeps a deck with six people writing in it searchable later.
Try the notebook template
A fillable, exportable version of the notebook structure described here.
Try it yourself