Engineering Design in Knitting

When I taught the Engineering Design Cycle, it looked more or less like this:

(This is NASA's for Elementary School STEM.  I think I used slightly different words so it was more closely tied to the cycle I used for Science Inquiry, but the same general ideas.)

Let's relate it to knitting for a moment, shall we?

The problem: Dylan anticipated having cold hands while we lived in Tokyo.  He had lost the mittens I made for him a few years ago.

Ideas: Buy Dylan gloves.  Make Dylan search through the storage facility until he found his old ones.  Make new ones.

Select a solution: Making new ones sounded like fun.  And that way they would be exactly what he wanted.  Searching for the old ones would not be time efficient, as it was unlikely to be successful.

(Here's where there's a step missing - there should be a Design the Solution stage)
Design the Solution: I measured and planned and (very briefly) reviewed other mitten patterns.

Build the Solution:  Knit.

(Another difference in my cycle was that at this stage I would show that there's often backtracking - does the building go as expected?  do you have to review your design and make changes?  "Build the Solution" actually involves several loops through the design, build, evaluate steps.)

Evaluate:  Try the mitten on Dylan.  Make adjustments.  Try again.

Present the Solution: Damn.  Yes, I said it, DAMN.  It just isn't right:

And that's why Engineering Design is presented as a CYCLE.  Here we go again:

State the Problem: The stockinette thumb gusset just wasn't working.  To be the size Dylan needs for his giant hands, it was way out of proportion with the rest of the mitt and ended up just not fitting right as a result.

Generate Ideas: The 2x2 ribbing needs to be carried through the gusset to provide the right stretchiness and resistance.

Design the Solution:  More sketching, lots of math...

Build the Solution: Start with a test swatch (I actually did several) where different ways of creating the increases for the gusset can be tested:

Build the Solution (continued):
The next mitt is on the needles.  More stitches in the cast on, already an inch done.  Hopefully by the time I get to the end of this one, Second Mitten Syndrome hasn't hit so badly that I can't get a pair of matching mitts done.