2. Making your ideas visual: Prototypes
Paper prototype Physical prototype Demonstration
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3. Why do you think it’s
valuable to create
prototypes?
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4. When we create something new,
failure is always an option
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5. 1959: British industrialist Henry Kremer
offers £50,000 to the first person to
build a human-powered aircraft
What is required
to solve this
challenge?
The Kremer Competition
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7. Why MacCready’s competitors did not succeed
Their designs relied on what they already knew about flight—
just like these people:
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8. This is what happens with…
Only one
prototype Rapid prototyping
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9. You have 25 minutes
to create a prototype that explains your idea
Paper prototype Physical prototype DemonstrationRAMESH R 9
10. Test your first prototype
You have five minutes to:
1. Show your prototype to another group for feedback.
2. Provide feedback on their prototype.
What’s one thing you should keep?
What’s one thing you should change?
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Editor's Notes
Use this slide deck to introduce any activity that requires students to go through multiple versions of an idea.
Five minutes for group discussion.
Give the group five minutes to brainstorm answers to this question.
The criteria for the Kremer Competition:
The aircraft had to take off under human power, clear a 10-foot hurdle and complete a figure-8 flying circuit that was just over a mile long.
Kremer would eventually offer more money for the first person to fly across the English Channel in a human-powered craft.
Dr. Paul MacCready Jr. won the prize in 1977. His aircraft, the Gossamer Condor, went on to fly across the English Channel in 1979.
The problem he saw was building an aircraft that could be rapidly changed in the field.
The plane had a modular design that could be modified very easily with limited tools in the field— he built the capacity to learn from his failures directly into his design.
His competitors relied on what they already knew about aeronautics, then tried to perfect that knowledge in the isolation and sterility of the lab.
