It’s been almost a year since our FIRST® LEGO® League Global Innovation Semi-Finalists from the FLL WORLD CLASSSMseason became official Innovation Ambassadors. We asked them to contribute some of their best practices to help those of you finishing up your TRASH TREKSSMseason with some guidance on taking your team’s innovative solution to the next level.
Here’s what a few of them had to say:
What tip do you have for teams when one of their ideas fail?
Think about what needs to be solved and think about unique ways to solve it. Sometimes the answer isn’t always the obvious. Keep searching and if there is nothing, see if there is a branch of it that would work. -NeXTGen
What tip do you have for teams as they are considering the factors for implementation of their Project Innovative Solution?
It is always frustrating to present an idea to someone and then hear them say “that will never work.” But this is not the death of an idea! Always ask, “Why won’t it work?” and then do some work to see if the limitations are solvable, or perhaps the limitations just refine the ways your product could work. Expecting to hear “that will never work” has made our team much braver about the responses they get in presentations, and have greater resilience in finding a way to solve a problem. Presentations are learning opportunities that reveal product flaws and lead to better solutions. – Robrostorms (Now Team HIPE)
Be original. Do a patent search to be sure that your team’s idea is unique. -NeXTGen
It is important to think about the usability of your idea. Is your idea convenient for whomever your product is targeted to help? Try to have a user-friendly design. Usability testing is also extremely important so we highly recommend it (and the sooner the better). Seeing other kids work with our app opened our eyes to many factors that we didn’t consider.-Team Storm
What are your team’s best practices from your Project work this season? Send your tips to fll-media@firstinspires.org.
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