1. Maker Space Session 1- The Design Process

2. Warm Up  In your Make Space Notebook, Choose one of the warm up activities and work on it for 5 minutes.  Write the # and Name of the Activity as well as today’s date at the top of your page.  Choose an activity you have not done before.

3. The Design/Engineering Process Designers and engineers use a process to arrive at a solution. As we work through a challenge or project, think about how your work ties to specific steps of the process.

4. Consider the Tape Dispenser Someone designed this object. What features make this object functional? What features make it attractive? What features make this object easy to use? Are all tape dispensers the same?

5. Other Tape Dispensers  Why are there different styles and sizes of tape dispensers?  What would a designer or engineer need to think about when designing these dispensers?

6. Build Test & Evaluate Redesign Identify Problem BrainstormDesign Share and Reflect

7. BRAINSTORM  What are some different ways to tackle the challenge?  Off-the-wall suggestions often spark GREAT ideas.  How creative can you be?

8. DESIGN  Which brainstormed ideas are really possible, given your time, tools, and materials?  What are some problems you need to solve as you build your project?  How can a sketch help clarify your design?

9. BUILD  What are your limitations – time, materials, tools?  What are the properties of the materials?

10. TEST, EVALUATE, AND REDESIGN  Why is it a good idea to keep testing a design?  What specific goal are you trying to achieve, and how will you know if you’ve been successful?  How does the design meet the criteria for success presented in the challenge?

11. SHARE SOLUTIONS and REFLECT  What’s the best feature of your design? Why?  What were the different steps you did to get your project to work?  What was the hardest problem to solve?  Did you have to do something a few times to get it to work? What?  If you had more time, how would you improve your project?

12. Challenge: Design a Kite  Each team will be given a bag of materials  Using the Engineering/Design Process, solve the problem of “Designing a Kite”  Teams will be given 15 minutes to go through the process except for the “Share and Reflect” step.  Each team will have 1 minute to share their idea with the class. The class will provide feedback on each design.  Each team will then take 5 minutes to write a reflection about their design.

13. How Might Your Design Change if:  -you were given a requirement that it had to fly for 10 minutes  -you could only use 3 different supplies?  -you could only use 12 inches of tape?  -there was a weight limit for your kite?  -your kite could not be typical “kite shaped”?