Discovery · Systems Project 5
The Design Process
Build it, watch it fall over, and find out that was the plan.
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Try It — Five Minutes, No Planning
Build the tallest tower you can that will hold a can of soup on top.
You get five minutes. Start now. Do not plan, do not sketch, just build.
⚠ One Rule
You may not just stack bricks in a straight pile. A tower has to be built, not piled.
When the time is up, put the can on top.
| Question | My answer |
|---|---|
| How tall was it? | |
| Did it hold the can? | |
| If it fell, which part gave way first? | |
| How much of your five minutes was spent rebuilding? |
If you got another five minutes right now, what is the first thing you would change?
You Just Did Engineering --- Badly
You had a problem, you tried something, it worked or it did not, and you learned something.
That is the right idea. But you learned it slowly and by accident. Engineers do the same thing on purpose, in an order, and they write it down.
Learn It — Eight Steps, In Order
The is how engineers turn a problem into something that works. It is not a straight line — you go back and around it many times.
Define the problem — Say exactly what has to be solved. This is the most important step and the one most often rushed.
Do background research — Find out what already exists. Somebody has probably solved something close to this.
Specify requirements — List what your answer must do to count as working. A is a test it has to pass.
Brainstorm solutions — Get several different ideas out. Not one idea. Several.
Choose the best one — Compare your ideas against the requirements and pick. Say why you picked it.
Do development work — Work the chosen idea up properly. Sketch it. Decide the details.
Build a — Make a first version. A prototype is meant to be tested, not admired.
Test and redesign — Find out where it fails, change it, and go round again.
Step 1 Is Where Projects Go Wrong
“Build a tall tower” is not a defined problem. “Build the tallest tower that will hold a can of soup without falling over” is.
The second one tells you when you have finished and how to tell if you failed. The first one does not.
A real example
When a car turns a corner, the outside wheel travels further than the inside wheel.
In the 1920s both back wheels were fixed to one bar, so the engine drove them at the same speed. The inside wheel had to skid across the road on every corner. Tyres wore out fast.
The defined problem: let the two wheels turn at different speeds while the engine still drives them both.
Someone had to notice the skidding, work out why it happened, and say what a solution would have to do — before anyone could design one.
Steps 7 and 8 are a loop
Build, test, find the weakness, change it, build again. Engineers expect to go round this several times.
A prototype that fails is not a wasted afternoon. It is the step that tells you what to fix.
Draw That Loop
In Systems Project 4 you learned to send an arrow back up to an earlier box. The design process is exactly that shape — test, and if it failed, go back to step 6.
Do It — The Tower, Properly
1. Define the problem
Write it in one sentence. It must say what you are building, what it has to hold, and how you will know it worked.
My problem:
Read it back. Could somebody else tell whether you had succeeded, just from that sentence? If not, rewrite it.
2. Look at towers that already exist
Think of tall structures you have seen — bridges, cranes, pylons, radio masts, scaffolding.
| Structure | What makes it strong | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
3. Write your requirements
List what your tower must do. Each one has to be something you can measure or test.
| # | My tower must… | How I will test it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 |
⚠ "Strong" Is Not a Requirement
You cannot test “strong.” You can test “holds a full can of soup for thirty seconds without leaning.”
4. Brainstorm — three ideas, not one
Sketch three different towers. Genuinely different, not the same one three times.
Three sketches in your notebook
| Idea | How it works | Its biggest weakness |
|---|---|---|
| A | ||
| B | ||
| C |
Naming the weakness now is not pessimism. It is how you choose.
5. Choose, and say why
Compare all three against your requirements. Pick one.
I chose idea ___ because:
6. Build the prototype
Build your chosen design. Work from your sketch, not from memory.
7. Test it, three rounds
Put the can on. Measure the height. Write down what happened. Then improve it and go again.
| Round | Height | Held the can? | What failed | What I changed next |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 3 |
Did your tower get taller each round, or did one change make it worse?
8. Compare with Try It
| Question | Try It (guessing) | Now (process) |
|---|---|---|
| Tallest height | ||
| Held the can? | ||
| Could I rebuild it exactly? |
The Last Row Is the Real Difference
A tower you got by guessing is a tower you cannot repeat. A tower you designed is one you can build again, explain to somebody else, and improve next week.
9. Make it harder
Two cans. Or a can balanced off to one side. Pick a harder test and run the loop again.
What harder test did you try, and did it survive?
Score It — Checkpoint
Which step is this?
| What the engineer is doing | Step number |
|---|---|
| Writing down that the claw must hold a cube for ten seconds | |
| Looking at how other teams built their arms last season | |
| Sketching four different claw shapes | |
| Dropping the cube on purpose to see what breaks | |
| Deciding the real trouble is that cubes slip, not that the arm is weak |
Problem or not?
Say whether each one is properly defined. If not, rewrite it so it is.
| Statement | Defined? | Better version |
|---|---|---|
| Make the robot better | ||
| Build a claw that lifts a cube without dropping it | ||
| Make it go fast |
Can you do it again?
Think about it
Your Try It tower may well have been taller than your designed one. Does that mean the process was a waste of time?
Step 1 is the one people rush. What actually goes wrong later when the problem was never properly defined?
Your robot has to push objects off a line. Write that as a defined problem — one sentence, with a test in it.
Next
You have the process. Now you point it at a real part of your robot.
In Systems Project 6 — Structure and , you design the blade your robot needs — and your class cannot attempt Coding Project 6 until you do.
When you are finished, press the button to turn in your work and save a copy.
KIPR · Botball Explorer · Discovery