TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Breaking Beams
Students learn about stress and strain by designing and building beams using polymer clay. They compete to find the best beam strength to beam weight ratio, and learn about the trade-offs engineers make when designing a structure.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Car Collision Testing & Tradeoffs: Don't Crack Humpty
Student groups are provided with a generic car base on which to design a device/enclosure to protect an egg as it rolls down a ramp at increasing slopes. During this activity, student teams design, build and test their prototype...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Trade Offs and Maximizing Efficiency in a Fast Food Restaurant
Students learn about how to improve efficiency by examining fast food restaurants. More specifically, they learn about the concepts of trade-offs, constraints, increasing efficiency and systems thinking. They consider how to improve the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Gears: Lift It Up!
In this activity, students learn about the trade-off between speed and torque when designing gear ratios. The activity setup includes a LEGO pulley system with two independent gear sets and motors that spin two pulleys. Each pulley has...
Other
Engineering for Change: Necessary Trade Offs When Co Designing New Technology
The co-design of new technology with communities has benefits and trade-offs. Engineers Without Borders Australia describe a co-design project in rural Cambodia that they participated in. The goal was to design assistive technologies...
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Accept a Design Trade Off Challenge Science Projects
Build a device to accomplish a fun task. Accept a design trade-off challenge of using only a set amount of simple materials, as if you were stuck on a desert island, to make your device work.
CK-12 Foundation
Ck 12: Physical Science: Technological Design Constraints
[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] The technological design process is a step-by-step approach to finding a solution to a problem. Often, the main challenge in technological design is finding a...
Other
Joining Dots: Why Design Means Compromise
In this blog article, the author talks about some of the trade-offs that must occur during the software design process with reference to an interview with Bill Buxton who was Principle Researcher at Microsoft Research at the time....
Other
Mobile Spoon: Here's to Trade Offs and Compromises Your Product's Best Friends
This article discusses some of the different trade-offs and compromises that happen during a design process, for example, usability vs. appeal. Includes some examples from a home renovation and from technology features.