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VCE Systems Engineering Unit 1 — Electrotechnological systems design · Stage 6

Weeks 10-12 · Investigating and defining your own problem

Define a specific problem with a real user, and write evaluation criteria that can actually be measured.

VCE-SE-U1-O1

Open this deck on the projector and press F for full-screen. N toggles speaker notes. The accompanying teacher guide is at /curriculum/vce-systems-engineering-unit-1/teacher/lessons/6.

Before this lesson:

Have two or three real, local problems ready for students who cannot find one. A stalled brief costs weeks.

intention 2 min

Investigating and defining your own problem

Define a specific problem with a real user, and write evaluation criteria that can actually be measured.

Have two or three real, local problems ready for students who cannot find one. A stalled brief costs weeks.

concept 10 min

What we're covering

  • Identify a specific resource problem with a real user, and say who that user is.
  • Write your design brief: the problem, its context, the constraints and the considerations.
  • Research the factors that will influence how your system is created and used, and identify which ones actually bind on your project.
  • Write measurable evaluation criteria, covering both the system and your use of the process.
  • File all of it in your record of evidence.
  • Re-read the design brief now that students know what components can do. Most will revise what they thought they wanted to build, which is the point of the ordering.
  • Teach investigating and defining as an activity with outputs, not a vague research phase: a defined problem, a design brief, research into the factors that influence the system, and evaluation criteria.
  • Have students identify a specific resource problem with a real user. "Save water" is not a problem. "The school greenhouse is watered on a timer and floods in winter" is.
  • Teach the factors that influence creation and use and have students work out which ones actually bind on their project. Most projects are constrained by two or three, not all of them.
  • Teach design thinking strategies explicitly, as three distinct tools with different jobs, and run a short activity on each so students have used all three before they are asked to name them:
    • Critical — judging what is there. Take an existing product that addresses this problem and pull it apart: what does it do well, where does it fail, what did its designer prioritise?
    • Creative — generating what is not there. Rapid divergent work: twenty ideas in ten minutes, no filtering, quantity over quality.
    • Speculative — asking what could be. Push the timeframe out: if water cost ten times what it does now, what would this system need to be?
  • Then make students name which strategy they used for each idea they keep. A student who cannot say why an idea is creative rather than critical has usually only done one of the three.
  • Build evaluation criteria from the constraints, considerations and system parameters. Criteria must be measurable: "works well" cannot be assessed, "keeps soil moisture between 30% and 50%" can.
  • This is the first assessment point.
check 5 min

Quick check

My criteria could be applied by someone else to my finished system and produce the same judgement.

Students write the solution into the brief. If the brief names the components, it is not a brief, and it forecloses the design work.

reflect 5 min

Before you pack up

Could someone else build a different system that still satisfies your brief? If not, your brief is too narrow.

Design brief; research into influencing factors; measurable evaluation criteria. First assessment point.

End of lesson 6

That's it.

Tomorrow / next lesson: Generating and designing.

Teacher guide Next lesson's deck → All decks