An outback community at sunset with solar panels, wind turbines, water tanks, a comms tower and a drone
Year 7 · Unit 05 · Lesson 03

Find the Problem

Amateurs pick solutions. Designers pick problems. Everything after today runs on what gets locked today — chosen by them, with criteria, on evidence.

The pivot lesson: individuals become design studios. Teams form through THE MIX — built on Lesson 2’s skill tags, at least three different skills per studio, with the friendship lobby refereed by the program’s own evidence: “Joan didn’t hire her best mate — she asked for what she was missing.” Then the Lesson 1 promise is kept: the canvases return, and the BUG HUNT begins with the designer’s secret — every idea on those maps creates a problem. Bugs get flagged in three words across four territories (MACHINES · ENERGY · WATER · PEOPLE & JOBS), sized by the whole-class Goldilocks calibration game (arms wide · pinch · thumbs up), championed in standing 30-second pitches, and decided by four questions — REAL? 2040? OURS? GOLDILOCKS? The lock is the real-world standard: a HOW MIGHT WE statement, taught with the smuggling law — no solutions hiding inside the problem — evidenced in a 5-minute source check, and signed onto the Problem Dossier that travels all the way to Pitch Day.

Setup

THE MIX

Three or four per studio, at least three different circled skills, refereed firmly. The 90-second studio-name deadline is real — start the timer, enjoy the panic. The founding ritual seals it: the name said aloud, together, once. Studios that can’t say their own name can’t pitch it.

Core

THE BUG HUNT + Goldilocks

Canvases returned with ceremony, all maps on the table, five loud minutes: every problem flagged with a “BUG!” and a three-word label, then read aloud — ideas die in silence. The calibration game sizes the room’s judgment before studios size their own bugs: “fix climate change” (arms wide), “the crib room fridge is noisy” (pinch), “haul truck batteries can’t last a full shift” (thumbs up).

The reframe that unlocks everything: solar farm? Meet nighttime. No people on site? Ask the town. Problems hide inside ideas — and their maps are full of ideas.
Decide

The champion round + four questions

Thirty seconds per champion, standing, talk-ladder encouraged — and they should hear you say it: this is Pitch Day’s first rehearsal. Then the four questions decide, not a captain’s call: REAL · 2040 · OURS · GOLDILOCKS. Deadlocked studios let the questions break it — that’s what they’re for.

Lock

HMW + evidence + signatures

The smuggling law taught before pens move: “how might we build an app to…” has already picked the answer. The frame scaffolds it — HOW MIGHT WE (problem) FOR (who) SO THAT (what improves) BY 2040 — then a 5-minute evidence check (the law is three units old: no source, no evidence) and all signatures on the Dossier, including the studio rule: “we argue about ideas, never about people.”

Collect the Dossiers, photograph them, then pin them where the class can read every HMW all term — public problems cross-pollinate, and nobody quietly abandons an HMW the whole room has read.

Teacher intel

“Your bug — who exactly feels it? Name a person, not a company.”
“Your HMW has a solution hiding in it. Can you find it before I point?”
“The champion who lost — what did the winning bug have that yours didn’t?” (Public credit for graceful losers: Pitch Day poise in training.)
“Which studio’s problem would YOUR studio least want to swap for? Why?” (Envy is diagnostic.)
HMW qualitySmuggled: “build a giant battery so trucks run all night” — the battery is an answer. Clean: “keep electric machines running through a full shift, for site operators, so diesel isn’t the fallback.” Fuzzy: “make mining better” — better how, for whom? A clean HMW names a problem, a person who feels it, and a change you could point at.
Stalled studiosOffer at most two from the menu, and make them trade: keeping a town alive as the site needs fewer workers · what robots can’t do in an emergency · 24-hour power without diesel · less water where there’s none to spare · training for jobs that change every five years.
Running shortCalibration drops to three items; the hunt compresses to three minutes. Protect the champion round, the four questions, the HMW lock and the signatures — the sprint cannot start without a signed Dossier.
Watch for“The first idea is the best idea” (the sprint will disprove it; for now, delay it) · “bigger problem = better pitch” (judges reward the solvable) · “locked problem = finished thinking” (the thinking has just been AIMED — say it as Dossiers come in).