Project: Soccer World Cup

Group size: 3-4 students
Activity time: 25 minutes

Created by: Reid Bailey

In "Soccer World Cup", small teams use office supplies to make a device to score a soccer goal. The goal is just a box turned on its size (e.g., a box that reams of paper are shipped in, a shoe box) and the ball is a ping pong ball.

We invite you to use this project with a capture method from the Capturing Design Signatures collection. Using a capture method, this activity gives students the opportunity to reflect on the actions they take in their design process, and notice how they work together as a team.

Choose one of the following capture methods:

• Design Signatures App: This app helps students track their design process on a mobile app or on a desktop website, and creates a colorful visual timeline of their design process stages. 
• Bubble sheets: This bubble sheet helps students track their design process by pen and paper, by “bubbling in” the dot for the corresponding time and design process stage.
• Google forms survey: This Google Forms survey helps students track their design process by filling in checkboxes in a survey.
• Spreadsheet: This spreadsheet helps students track their design process by coloring in cells for the corresponding time and design process stage. Designed to support asynchronous data collection for longer projects.

The purpose of this activity is to engage students in a low-stakes and creative design activity. Through tracking the design timeline of each team, this activity sets up a discussion about the importance of design process in producing a product that performs well and about how design is not a rote set of steps.  

After this activity, students will be more able to: 

• Observe their own design process while designing
• Explain their own design process
• Discuss the relationship between process and product

• "Soccer goal": a box turned on its side, e.g. a box that reams of paper are shipped in, a shoe box
• "Soccer balls": multiple ping pong balls
  • Having more than one ball is important as it lets multiple teams test their designs at the same time
• A piece of tape to mark the distance from the goal that the students' device needs to be set up behind
• "Goalies": aluminum cans or bottles
• Materials kit: (be creative about what you include!)
  • Multiple energy sources: skewers or popsicle sticks that allow students to use gravity, a rubber band, a bendable beam (e.g. a spoon), a binder clip, etc.
  • Tape
  • Building materials: popsicle sticks, cardboard, etc.

1. Set up the goal, goalies, and fault "plane" as shown in the diagram below
2. (Optional: as the instructor, set up the capture method you've chosen)

1. Introduce the activity to students using the diagram above.
   1. "Design a device to score the soccer ball in the goal. The device must be fully behind the “fault” plane at all times and no member of the team may extend past the fault plane.  A member of your team may activate the device, but the energy to propel the soccer ball towards the goal must not come from a team member.  You will get to try to score 3 goals - the objective is to maximize the number of goals made."
2. Students have 15 minutes to design and build a device. One person on each team will be the Design Process Tracker. This student will record the type of design activity that their team did during each minute. If the team did more than one activity in a minute, select the most dominant activity. The Design Process Tracker can help with designing the device, but we've generally found hat recording design activities requires most of their attention.
   1. Have students choose and identify the tracker for each team.
   2. Explain the design process categories you plan to use for this activity.
   3. Have the design process tracker access the capture method of your choice.
3. Display a 15-minute timer, give each team a kit of materials, and begin the timer.
4. Call out each minute to remind the Design Process Tracker to make a recording.