2025 Design Thinking Challenge

North STEAM Fair 2025 Design Challenge

The Problem: North School is hoping to apply for a Green Ribbon Award next year, which would highlight the work our school does regarding sustainability. In many classrooms, however, there are no compost bins for items like used paper towels or food waste. We also throw away items like pencils, markers, and crayons that it would be possible to recycle, and items wind up in trash or recycling that might not belong there at all. 

Your Mission: For this year's design challenge, create a new classroom-based receptacle or waste station that helps students easily sort the waste that is generated in classrooms. 

What You’ll Do: A good design thinking project involves more than coming up with a cool idea on your own. If you opt to do the design challenge, make sure to follow these five steps used by real-world designers: 

1. Listen: Interview your classmates or North staff to learn more about the trash issue and the needs of our school. What kind of waste is being generated? Are there items we throw away that could instead be composted, recycled, or reused? 

2. Define the Problem: Using what you learned from interviews plus any outside research, write down the biggest waste issues you are trying to solve with your design. 

3. Brainstorm Solutions: Be sure to get creative! 

4. Prototype: Build a simple prototype of your design. This can include not only a receptacle, but relevant posters and instructions as well.  

5. Test and Make Improvements: If possible and only after you have permission, test your prototype in your classroom or in Mr. Frankel’s iLab. If something isn’t working as expected, make updates and try to test again! 

Your presentation the night of the fair should show us how you tackled each of these five steps. We can’t wait to see your work, and happy designing!