The Engineering Design Process
Great engineering almost never comes from one flash of genius. It comes from a repeatable loop of steps that you walk around again and again, getting a little better each time. In this lesson you will learn every step of that loop and follow one real project all the way through it: designing a low-cost water filter for a mountain village school.
What you will be able to do after this lesson
- Name the stages of the engineering design process in order and say what goes into and comes out of each one.
- Tell the difference between a requirement (what the design must DO) and a constraint (a limit it must live inside).
- Run a brainstorm using the correct rules, so you get many ideas instead of few.
- Build and read a decision matrix that scores several designs against weighted criteria, and pick a winner using real numbers.
- Explain why engineers prototype, test, and iterate instead of building the final product straight away.