Design Process: Define the Problem

[AidenPyle]

With the new VEX season starting off, many teams are beginning to start brainstorming and creating new robots. From an engineering perspective, the first thing to do is define the problem. Defining the problem helps you and your team to understand and wrap your mind around the actual problem you are presented with, and what needs to happen to accomplish the goal. I have seen many teams who start off building a robot, not even defining the problem or even brainstorming, and they end up in ruins because they didn’t have a good design from the beginning. Here is a story that you should share with your team and club to demonstrate the importance of the design process, especially defining the problem.

When trying to define the real problem, remember the elevator riddle, as follows.

There is a story about a skyscraper which is told to young engineers to emphasize the importance of this step in the design process. The story goes that there was a skyscraper in a major city and the occupants of the building were complaining that the elevator ride times were too long. The owners of the building wanted to fix this, so they put out a call to several local engineering firms asking them for proposals.

1. One firm put in a bid to renovate the office and add two additional elevators. They speculated that adding more elevators would cut down on elevator stops and decrease the average ride time. They estimated this would cost some ludicrous amount of money (details vary based on the telling.)

2. Another engineering firm suggested renovating the building and adding some brand new, state of the art, high-speed elevators. These faster elevators would also reduce ride time. This suggestion didn’t cost as much as the first proposal, but was still a ridiculous amount of money.

3. The third engineering firm came back with a proposal to upgrade the elevator software. They claimed that they had devised a new algorithm that would more effectively utilize the elevators already in place to cut down on average ride time. This proposal was still somewhat expensive, but much cheaper than the other two.

The owners of the building were just about to hire the third firm when a fourth proposal was presented. After detailed review, the fourth proposal was immediately implemented. The fourth engineering firm suggested that full-length mirrors be installed in every elevator. When the building residents were in front of a mirror, they fidgeted and adjusted their ties, checked their make-up, and so forth and didn’t notice the length of the elevator ride. This proposal didn’t cost the owners very much at all and was dubbed a great success. The fourth company understood that the real problem wasn’t that the elevators were too slow, but that the residents thought the ride times were too long.

[Bobtheblob_5327B]

Thank you for sharing that story! Our team really tries to emphasize following the design process not “for the judges” but because it actually works, and what you shared was clearly an example of that @Aiden Pyle