Learning Targets
- Generate multiple possible design concepts.
- Avoid selecting the first idea too early.
- Connect ideas to user needs, criteria, and constraints.
IED Unit 5 • Lesson 5.5
Concept Generation and Human-Centered Ideation
Focus question: How can engineers generate creative solutions without choosing the first idea too quickly?
Your lesson guide
Objective
Generate multiple possible design concepts. Avoid selecting the first idea too early. Connect ideas to user needs, criteria, and constraints.
Materials
For the online work: a browser and your engineering notebook. Follow the activity’s materials list for any physical build, and get teacher approval before using equipment.
Plan your time
Suggested work block: 45–60 minutes. Physical builds and projects may span several classes; follow your teacher’s schedule.
Mission Briefing
Today’s Plan
Use this page with the lesson presentation, your engineering notebook, and the tools or evidence assigned for Generate Human-Centered Design Concepts.
Success Looks Like
You can generate multiple concepts and connect each idea to user needs and design criteria.
LaunchLearnApplyCheckSubmit
Opening Prompt
How can engineers generate creative solutions without choosing the first idea too quickly?
Connect your response to the decision, evidence, or quality standard required for Generate Human-Centered Design Concepts.
Reveal: useful engineering move
This lesson is ready to move forward when the evidence meets this standard: The concepts differ in approach, not only appearance, and each connects to the design brief.
Core Skill
What We Are Practicing
Early ideation should create options before narrowing.
Creative ideas still need to connect to the user need.
Sketches help teams compare features, tradeoffs, and assumptions.
Your Task
Generate Human-Centered Design Concepts
Create multiple distinct ideas that respond to the defined user needs without evaluating them too early.
- Review the design brief and highlighted user needs.
- Generate at least three meaningfully different concepts.
- Annotate how each concept supports the user and criteria.
- Identify questions or unknowns for each concept.
Quality check: The concepts differ in approach, not only appearance, and each connects to the design brief.
Lesson Interactive
Create a Diverse Concept Set
Select three concepts that solve the same need using genuinely different operating principles—not just different colors or surface styling.
Ideation goal: increase the number and variety of possible solutions before comparing them.
Look for different mechanisms or physical principles, not cosmetic variations.
What You Will Submit
Concept Generation Set
Submission standard: The concepts differ in approach, not only appearance, and each connects to the design brief.
Resources
Lesson Resources
Lesson 5.5 PowerPoint
Use the lesson slides for guided practice, interactive checks, and the exit ticket.
Introduction to Engineering Design
Return to the IED course hub for units, resources, certifications, and current course information.
Build your lesson report
Checkpoint: is your evidence ready?
- Check calculations, units, labels, and measurements against the activity requirements.
- Record what actually happened, including unexpected results.
- Explain what you changed and why; attach required drawings, photos, CAD, or code in your classroom assignment.
Submit the evidence specified in the activity and your classroom assignment. The report below collects your notes, calculations, observations, and reflections; attach any required drawings, photos, CAD, or code separately.
A PDF download is not a submission. Review it, then upload it and any required attachments through your classroom assignment system.