Energy Poverty: Ideate and Evaluate

Learning Goals

1. Students brainstorm "radical" ideas.

2. Students use two reality checks to focus ideas into two design concepts.

General Description

Ideate is the mode of your design process in which you aim to generate radical design alternatives. Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes—it is a mode of “flaring” rather than “focus.” The goal of ideation is to explore a wide solution space – both a large quantity of ideas and a diversity among those ideas. From this vast depository of ideas you can build prototypes to test with users.

This project has two major components: 1) develop an activity/exercise that allows participants to experience and empathize with issues similar to those that their user faces, and 2) some device or design component that helps alleviate an energy poverty issue or concern for their user.

Additionally, or alternatively, you may ask the students to design a short instructional course, manual, and/or video on how to use and properly maintain their product.

Resources

• Ideate Concepts Worksheet (Student Resource)

• Refine/Evaluate Concepts Worksheet (Student Resource)

Activity (Ideate)

1. Have groups follow the brainstorm slide below to come up with solution ideas. All of the ideas should then be captured in the EDPL.

Activity (Evaluate)

2. Model with one team placing their post it note ideas into the design thinking Venn Diagram intersections below. After they complete the activity here, the students should also complete the evaluation matrix in their EDPL which compares the design ideas against their requirements to also factor into the decision for what to prototype.

Have all teams place their post it notes, then model with a different team going through the reality checks below to focus down to two design concepts.

After posting ideas in the intersections, if you have some that are in the middle, then do they satisfy the 5 M’s

• Man/WomanPower (i.e. enough people) to do it

• Methods/Skills of how to do it

• Materials available and accessible based on the challenge

• Manageable based on Time available in the challenge

• Money/Resources to do it are not too costly based on the challenge

If no ideas satisfy both the center intersection and the 5 Ms, then collaborate to modify the closest ones so you have two ideas that do satisfy the center intersection and the 5 Ms