About

Distance education (also known as e-learning) is where students attend classes from their homes. Students will normally be at their computers, in their bedrooms or living rooms, communicating with their teacher through a video app or education portal on the internet. Having the right furniture that you need for e-learning will help you concentrate better and work efficiently, because everything that you need is at your fingertips. A workstation is a place where furniture is arranged for you to work at. Workstations are popular for students and business people who work from home.
 

Your task

Design an e-learning workstation for your home. Your workstation may be in your bedroom or living room, or anywhere that you like. Your workstation should be comfortable, it must help you work efficiently, and be just what you need when you are e-learning from home. You may design some or all of the furniture needed for your workstation, for example, you don’t have to design the chair if you don’t need to. Build a full-size model of your workstation and test it. Work on this project in a small team with a group of your classmates.
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The design thinking stages

Follow the five design thinking stages to ensure that you think of everything and do everything necessary in order to succeed in your design project. First, you must UNDERSTAND the design topic and the needs of the users. With that understanding, you can DECIDE what is important to your design solution and what is not so important. Then you CREATE to come up with ideas and improve them. Then you BUILD your chosen design idea in a physical form and improve it through trial-and-error. Finally, you TEST your built design idea to get the opinions of users. ​​​​​​​Use the methods from the Design Thinking for Schools website as you follow the design thinking stages.
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​​​​​​​Note for teachers

Doing student design projects that use electrical parts or microcontrollers such as Arduino requires:

• teachers who are able to supervise such a project;
• laboratories or workshops with electrical and electronic parts and tools;
• and students who are trained to work with electricity, tools, and equipment.

Read the guide for teachers on Safety for the BUILD Stage for Level III to safely supervise this design project.