Guide A¶
Recording the Work as It Happens¶
Guide A runs during your project. It covers the period from your first meeting or brief through to your final submission — the months where the actual work happens, where decisions are made, where things go wrong and get fixed, where your understanding of the problem shifts beneath you.
Its purpose is simple: to help you capture that period honestly, in real time, in a form you can use later.
Why This Matters¶
Most students finish a final-year project and find themselves unable to explain it properly.
Not because they did not work hard — but because the thinking happened and then disappeared. The decision to use one framework over another, the three days spent debugging a problem that turned out to be an incorrect assumption, the meeting where the client clarified something that changed the entire direction — none of it was recorded. By the time reports were written and reflections submitted, it had been reconstructed from memory into something tidier, safer, and less true.
Guide A exists to prevent that.
A brief, honest entry written at the time of a decision is worth more than a paragraph reconstructed three months later. The habit is small. The return is significant.
What This Section Contains¶
Foundations establishes the context behind Guide A — the professional tradition it draws from, why that tradition has broken down in modern student projects, and what Vestigia does differently. Read this once, at the start. Return to it if the practice ever starts to feel like overhead rather than investment.
The Guide is the working document. It covers what to record, the five categories of meaningful entry, how often to write, and what format and tools work. This is the document you will return to most frequently during your project.
Living Examples shows the practice in action across four disciplines — Engineering, Computer Science / IT, Education, and UX / Marketing. Each example includes an annotated entry, an analysis of its individual and group value, and explicit connections to subject deliverables and assessment expectations.
How to Use Guide A¶
Read the Foundations document once before you begin. Then read The Guide, and keep it accessible during the project — not as something to complete, but as a reference for when you are deciding what is worth recording.
The examples are there when you need to see what the practice looks like in a discipline close to your own.
Start now, not later
The single most common regret among students who use Vestigia is starting Guide A too late. The early weeks of a project — the problem definition, the first decisions, the initial scope — are often the most important to have on record. They can only be recorded while they are happening.
If you are reading this at the start of your project, open a document, put today's date on it, and write your first entry before you close this tab.
Guide A and Guide B¶
Guide A does not stand alone. Everything you record here becomes the raw material for Guide B — the phase where you make sense of what happened and prepare it for professional presentation.
The quality of your Guide B showcase is directly shaped by the quality of your Guide A records. Students who kept honest, specific records during the project arrive at Guide B with something to work with. Students who did not arrive at a blank page.
This is why Guide A is where the work actually begins.
When your project is complete and you are ready to present your work professionally, continue to Guide B.