Imagine you are outside on a bike ride, and you get a flat tire. It’s a hot day, and you are miles from home. You left your cell phone behind. You have no supplies or tools. What do you do? Well, you may start to go through the engineering design process to solve the problem!
But what is engineering design process? In this blog, we explain the 5 steps of the engineering design process, elaborate on its importance for students and in life, and provide examples and activities of the process.
The engineering design process is a series of steps that engineers use to find a solution to a problem. Below are the 5 engineering design process steps.
1. Ask: What is the problem?
2. Imagine: Brainstorm solutions
3. Plan: What are the specifics?
4. Create: Put the plan in place
5. Improve: What didn’t work?
The engineering design process is iterative and can be repeated as needed and in whatever order. Following a sequenced plan is great, but sometimes new questions and problems arise that will need to be addressed before the original problem can be fixed.
Although the name can be misleading, the process isn’t strictly dedicated to engineering and is used by many computer scientists (and everyone else!). Everyone encounters problems that need to be solved. To solve them, you have to also design, test, and improve solutions. Keep reading to see a real life example of this process.
Let’s think back about the pickle you’re in on your bike ride. You have a flat tire, and you are far from home without any supplies or a cell phone. Let’s go through the engineering design process together to solve this problem.
1. Ask: What is the problem?
2. Imagine: Brainstorm solutions
3. Plan: What are the specifics?
4. Create: Put the plan in place
5. Improve: What didn’t work?
There are great benefits to learning the engineering design process for kids and in education. Problem solving is a skill that is essential for life. Engineering design problems for students will help teach students to work through problems, learn from mistakes, and collaborate with peers. For example, perhaps a class was assigned the egg drop challenge. They must find a way to drop an egg from a ledge and prevent it from cracking. Using the engineering design process, students will be able to practice their problem solving skills and learn from the failure of cracked eggs. While collaborating with one another, students can find success from adjusting and improving their plan.
Our Senior Curriculum Development Specialist and former teacher Bailey Streicher says, “The engineering design process is essential to any young creator, no matter the product. Learning the engineering design process challenges students to become well-rounded computer scientists, and in doing so, the engineering design process helps them to organize their thoughts and identify their own progress. Understanding the benefits of a cyclical design process and gaining the ability to put it into action will benefit students in all that they do.” Keep reading to learn more about how Bailey and our curriculum development team incorporate engineering design process example problems in Ellipsis Education curriculum.
Ellipsis Education provides full-year K-12 computer science curriculum. The engineering design process is taught and practiced throughout each grade level in our K-12 Pathway. We include a variety of STEM challenges within the lessons while introducing the engineering design process. Beyond that, our coding lessons challenge students to use what they know about the engineering design process and speak to how their programs are moving through each stage of the process. Many lessons ask students to stop and identify which stage they’re in at certain checkpoints in the lesson. (Example: I’m in the TEST stage of the engineering design process now. I’m running my program and identifying bugs that need to be fixed.)
Below, find highlights of an engineering design process example lesson from a variety of grade levels. To view the courses in which these lessons came from, visit our courses page.
In a first grade lesson, students work through the engineering design process to plan a coding project. Students learn how to plan a project and experience the importance of planning in the design process. Students practice with engineering design process real life examples such as making tacos, and then they apply the process to a Scratch Jr. project.
In a third grade lesson, students are introduced to the Design Process and how it’s used to create products or solve problems. Through scientific thinking and creative collaboration, students will work through the design process together to meet the requirements of an engineering challenge, building a lunar lander to safely land two astronauts on the surface of the moon. Given a set of limited materials, students must work together to apply the engineering design process and land their astronauts on the moon with their spacecraft.
In a sixth grade lesson, students will be introduced to the engineering design process and how it’s used to create products and solve problems. Through scientific thinking and creative collaboration, students will work through the design process together to meet the requirements of a challenge: Build a weight-bearing bridge using only the classroom materials given.
In a high school lesson, students will examine the benefits of following an iterative process when developing a product. Students will discuss how the iterative process applies to programming and how it can impact digital products. Then, students will participate in a paper challenge to iteratively develop paper structures: a paper airplane or a paper bridge.
If these lessons interest you or if you are looking for more engineering design process project ideas, schedule a 30-minute call with one of our curriculum experts.
Encourage your students to put the engineering design process to practice with this free lesson. In this lesson Hello World!, students will begin to explore the basics of how the internet works and how webpages are built. HTML and other established standards and best practices will be introduced and practiced. Students will create a simple webpage that displays a greeting message. When creating the website, the engineering design process for middle school students will be practiced. This lesson is built for grades 6-8 and includes links to the appropriate materials and resources, a detailed procedure, activity tips, and a bonus challenge activity.
