Engineering and designing is figuring out how to fail. Try things and fail quickly and inexpensively. This means figuring out simple tests you can do that don't cost you anything when they fail. They cost you a few minutes or a few broken sticks. You don't go out to find the most expensive components to start with. You find the simple things to start with to realize the fundamental errors you made before you get into making it difficult. You're on the right track there, so fail fast, fail often, and don't put off the part that you're not sure how to do.
Figure out why bother with everything else if you can't do that one critical part. At least do something to see if it makes sense at all. A hard thing to do when you're in teams is to listen. When you run out of ideas, it's great to have three or four other people around you.
Occasionally, the person who is the least experienced with what you're doing will come up with what might ordinarily be the dumbest idea but will be the key that unlocks something. They just take this really weird angle and say, "Why don't you turn it over?" You look and say, "Oh my God, what a great idea." Make sure the quiet one in the group has a chance to speak and share their ideas.
Mentors in particular, listen to this because that is your role. It's not about the design of the device; it's that the team is doing a good job of designing the device.
Frequently, I have the person that tends to blab a lot present what the quiet person is thinking so that they actually talk to each other. One of the cool things we've done in the past is to have two people ideate together, and then person A has to present person B's ideas. It's really fun for doing exactly that, like asking, "Why do you want that to do that?" The five whys help to understand why they want to do a project.
Have you talked about the five whys?
Maryam, what's a project you want to do this summer?
Wings.
Why wings?
I want to fly.
Why do you want to fly?
Because I want to see things.
Why not fly on a plane?
Because you cannot see everything that is under.
Well, get a window seat.
You just have one way to see the things. Instead, if you have your human... a glass-bottom plane, right. Do you want to see it because you want to experience flying or do you want to get really good pictures?
I want to experience flying. I want to be a bird.
Have you ever done underwater activities like scuba diving? You get the experience of flying when you are scuba diving, swimming. Would that be a fun experience? So basically, you'd like to go places that humans can't go and experience that sense of freedom, right? Notice how we're getting deeper into what was initially just a project about something that flies.
As you go deeper with why questions, you get a different perspective on the actual project. You'd like to make something that can extend your senses to places where you can't easily go. How many projects can do that?
Which may mean the project becomes completely different, but you boil down to the reason why she wants to do that thing. When doing this with someone else, start with the question "why," but if you just keep asking why, it can kill the conversation. You have to listen, care, try to understand, and adapt your approach based on what you hear. It's called the five whys, but you're starting off with maybe two whys and then like 15 other questions. It probes past that initial one thing and gets deeper.
This is the fun part about this kind of workshop where we don't know what's going to be done. For us, it's tough because we need to know what to have on hand. But it's fun for us and the mentors because we are trying to discover something cool. The beginning is really the students' imagination. We will probe and be involved, but they drive the decision process. Our job is to make sure that it percolates. We'll be doing more of that tomorrow, trying to boil down to the reason why we care about the projects.
Previously, we've had groups talk about project ideas based on why they want to do something. For example, people wanting to help others or wanting to make something they can ride that's fast. The actual project idea comes from these discussions. If people care about the same idea, they'll create cool ideas together. This could be anything, even a play or musical. It's a collaborative project.
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