Week 12 Tutorial: Final crit / grand show

Final projects presented to the whole studio and any guests

17 May 2027

Before the session#

Bring the final project, running, set up before your slot starts — changeover time between presenters is short.

In the session#

1. Set up your final project before your slot starts: laptop charged and plugged in, board powered on and already running its code, camera or projector aimed and focused. Do this before your slot, not during it — changeover time between presenters is short because the whole studio and any guests are seated through a fixed run of slots, and a presenter still plugging in cables eats into the next person’s time as well as their own. If your setup depends on room lighting or projector throw distance, check it in the room itself beforehand; a focus that looked right in the corridor often isn’t right under the crit’s actual lights.
2. Present in your fixed slot, in front of the whole studio and any guests. The mark is holistic against your own plan from Final Planning & Ideation, so what the audience needs to see is the piece running and standing on its own — not you narrating what it would do if a sensor were reading correctly. Guests in particular have no context beyond what’s in front of them, so a presentation that leans on spoken explanation instead of the working piece is the clearest sign something isn’t actually finished.
3. Name the three-plus techniques your project combines and the decision you are least sure about. Naming the techniques is how the marker checks they’re load-bearing rather than decorative — the same test the final-project brief itself sets. Naming the one decision you’re least sure about is the harder, more useful move: it’s an admission of a specific risk rather than a request for general praise, and it’s usually the single most useful thing you say in your slot.
4. Leave the project running as part of the show, which stays up for the rest of the day once every slot is done. This is the last session of the course, and the show is where the semester’s work is seen by people beyond the marker — unplugging the moment your slot ends trades that for a few minutes back that you don’t actually need.

Afterwards#

The final project is marked holistically against the brief — see the assessment page. This is also the last session of the course.