Hands mid design-sprint assembling a model offshore platform integrating wind and solar, over engineering sketches
Year 7 · Unit 05 · Lesson 04

The Design Sprint

One shape governs everything: DIVERGE then CONVERGE — flood the table, then choose. Teams that judge while generating produce neither.

The genuine design-sprint toolkit, adapted for 12-year-olds without losing its teeth. The warm-up proves the counterintuitive law — constraints are jet fuel — with two 30-second drawings (“a vehicle” vs “a one-person vehicle that works in a dust storm, with no driver”; round two always wins). Then CRAZY 8s, run hot: an A4 folded three times, eight panels, eight different answers to the studio’s HMW in eight minutes, one counted-down minute per panel — speed that outruns the inner critic. The silent museum follows: three wordless minutes, three dots per member, dots on ideas, never on people — the first time all year the quiet kids’ work competes on perfectly equal footing. Then STEAL & IMPROVE (the sanctioned crime, credit required), the drift check against the locked HMW, FRIENDLY FIRE between studios — the Kambaria hearing’s fire-back rule reborn as pitch rehearsal — and THE BLUEPRINT: the surviving concept drawn big with five required labels, destined to be the literal centre of the Pitch Day poster.

Spark

Constraints are jet fuel

Two 30-second rounds, revealed by show-and-compare — the constrained vehicles are always stranger and better. One line lands the principle: “a tight brief doesn’t shrink ideas; it sharpens them” — then each studio loads its own constraint: the HMW, copied word for word from the signed Dossier.

Wide

CRAZY 8s + the silent museum

Eight minutes counted down aloud, no talking, no judging, no stopping — the stall-rescue line is “draw the stupid version” (panel 6’s stupid idea famously fixes panel 8). Then total silence for the museum: every panel read, three dots per member placed on ideas alone. Count the heat map.

Watch who wins dots in the silence — it will surprise the room, and it’s the lesson working. Name it privately, loudly, or both.
Deep

STEAL & IMPROVE + the drift check

The crime, formally sanctioned: great designers steal, then improve — stealing without improving is the only offence, and credit is law. The mash-up must fit ONE sentence; sprawling concepts die on posters. Then the elite move: HMW read aloud, mash-up read aloud — do they match? Drifted studios fix the concept, never the question.

One studio will argue their drifted question is better. The answer is the Dossier’s signatures.
Test

FRIENDLY FIRE + THE BLUEPRINT

Studio pairs: 60-second explanations, two hard questions each way — and they’ll recognise the rule from the Kambaria hearing: hard questions are a gift. Unanswerable ones become fixes on the spot (a backup mash-up is pre-loaded for exactly this). Then the Blueprint: concept drawn big, five labels — name · what it is · who it’s for · how it answers the HMW · what it needs to exist. Collected with the Dossiers: Pitch Day’s poster, three-fifths built early.

Teacher intel

“Which panel took the longest? That’s the one your inner critic touched — what did it cost you?”
“Your mash-up in one sentence — now in five words. What survived?”
“The question you couldn’t answer — is that a hole in the concept or a hole in the pitch?” (Different fixes.)
“Label 5 says what it needs to exist. What’s the FIRST thing on that list a Year 7 could actually test?”
The clockWarm-up 30+30s · HMW load 2 min · Crazy 8s exactly 8 · museum 3 silent + 2 for dots · steal & improve 6 · drift check 4 · friendly fire 5 per pairing · Blueprint minimum 12. When a block ends, it ends — half the sprint’s lesson is that finished beats perfect.
Dots have losersSay BEFORE dots go down: “undotted panels are the steal round’s shopping aisle.” The exit’s “panel that deserves a mention on Pitch Day” gives every good orphan a stage.
Blueprint qualityLabel 4 is the tell: strong answers repeat words FROM the HMW. Label 5 honest beats impressive — “needs testing we can’t do yet” is a designer’s sentence, and Pitch Day’s judges are told to reward it.
Running shortOne warm-up round (keep the constrained one); friendly fire shrinks to one question each way. Crazy 8s, the museum, the drift check and the Blueprint are untouchable — they ARE the sprint.