Steady-state lateral load transfer

[bob.rb1]

Hi everybody!

I'm a Motorsport Engineering student currently working as a data engineer intern for a team in Lotus Cup Europe. I write a blog on Vehicle Dynamics of Race Cars, and the last post published addresses steady-state lateral load transfer.

For those of you interested in VD, here's the link to the article:

http://racingcardynamics.com/weight-transfer/

I would love to hear your thoughts on that!

[Jersey Tom]

Some feedback...

1. Visually it's quite nice. A lot of engineers are honestly poor at presenting things looking clean, sharp, and aesthetic - and don't think it's important. I think it's crucial.

2. The article starts with title, "WHAT THE BOOKS DIDN’T TELL YOU ABOUT LATERAL WEIGHT TRANSFER AND HOW TO USE IT IN SETUP", yet it kinda comes across as a regurgitation of book material (including reference graphs from RCVD). A lot of people cover this topic in the same way - to make it interesting I think what gets people's attention is what your take on it is. How does your experience and practical examples align with the theory?

3. In general I think it's good practice to put an executive summary first rather than last - especially when writing technical reports. I like to start off with the high level takeaways, the "Here's what you absolutely must see if you only spend 30 seconds on this page." Have something to catch the reader's interest, then let the more verbose bit following that be the supporting evidence. As it currently reads it's easy to lose the reader's focus or attention span - and that's coming from someone who does this for a living, much less a casual enthusiast.

[bob.rb1]

Some feedback...

1. Visually it's quite nice. A lot of engineers are honestly poor at presenting things looking clean, sharp, and aesthetic - and don't think it's important. I think it's crucial.

2. The article starts with title, "WHAT THE BOOKS DIDN’T TELL YOU ABOUT LATERAL WEIGHT TRANSFER AND HOW TO USE IT IN SETUP", yet it kinda comes across as a regurgitation of book material (including reference graphs from RCVD). A lot of people cover this topic in the same way - to make it interesting I think what gets people's attention is what your take on it is. How does your experience and practical examples align with the theory?

3. In general I think it's good practice to put an executive summary first rather than last - especially when writing technical reports. I like to start off with the high level takeaways, the "Here's what you absolutely must see if you only spend 30 seconds on this page." Have something to catch the reader's interest, then let the more verbose bit following that be the supporting evidence. As it currently reads it's easy to lose the reader's focus or attention span - and that's coming from someone who does this for a living, much less a casual enthusiast.

Thanks for such a good feedback, mate!

Regarding your comments:

1. Thanks for the compliments to the design. I agree with you, aesthetics is quite important to build trust in the content you present.

2. A few people told me about that. I thing the problem is most of the things that are presented in the beginning of the article are the stuff that can be found in books. I did include a mix of personal experience, with some analysis I did for a generic open wheeler. Also I included my own interpretation of analyses I did with matlab, and that can be found under section "Lateral Load Transfer as a Setup Tool".

3. It's definitely an idea to consider. My posts are generally long, and keeping the reader's attention span is a challenge. Having the takeaways in the beginning of the post rather than at the end, seems like a reasonable solution for that.

Thanks again for your help!

[JMS11]

I read through some of your articles. First I will say that the content of your articles is very good, and as Jersey Tom said, the presentation is very clean. The one critique that I have (and this may just be a personal thing) is that all of your articles sound like tabloid headlines. "Secrets that the books don't teach you", "6 tips to design like a pro", "The absolute guide to tires", etc. Seriously? I've read books from Hans Pacejka and the Millikens...but some internet blog post is going to be "the absolute guide to tires"?

There is a ton of automotive journalism that is complete garbage, trying to be passed off as technical explanations. Your articles are an exception, but skimming the titles of your articles would make me lump it in with the rest of the garbage before I even read it. I dunno, that may just be a personal preference of mine, your titles may be effective for drawing in readers for other people. But I tend to think that technical minded people (like most of your audience) don't like to be bullshitted.

[bob.rb1]

I read through some of your articles. First I will say that the content of your articles is very good, and as Jersey Tom said, the presentation is very clean. The one critique that I have (and this may just be a personal thing) is that all of your articles sound like tabloid headlines. "Secrets that the books don't teach you", "6 tips to design like a pro", "The absolute guide to tires", etc. Seriously? I've read books from Hans Pacejka and the Millikens...but some internet blog post is going to be "the absolute guide to tires"?

There is a ton of automotive journalism that is complete garbage, trying to be passed off as technical explanations. Your articles are an exception, but skimming the titles of your articles would make me lump it in with the rest of the garbage before I even read it. I dunno, that may just be a personal preference of mine, your titles may be effective for drawing in readers for other people. But I tend to think that technical minded people (like most of your audience) don't like to be bullshitted.

Thanks for the feedback and for the compliments, JMS. Regarding the headlines, well, I do use some copywriting techniques to create them. I'm relatively new to that blog writing thing, and I thought I'd study some blogs on how to create blogs and things like that, and a lot of them suggested to use a similar approach to headlines. I don't know if this actually attracts more audience to the posts, or if it actually annoys the real audience I want to have. To be fair, you were the first to give me this kind of feedback (except from the weight transfer article, which a few people mentioned the same as Jersey Tom). I'd be interested to know if this is a matter of personal opinion or if more people think the same way. I may try a different approach to the future articles, and see how people react. I'm glad that you liked the content, though!