About

Light is vital to our way of life. We illuminate up our homes, factories, and offices during the day and night, as and where we need. We illuminate entire cities at night. Light fittings in the home are used for illumination and decoration. Light fittings are also known as light fixtures or luminaires. The shape of the light fitting, its material, and colour can illuminate a well, and may improve the mood of the people there. A light fitting is a complete thing that merely needs to be connected to electricity to work. It has these parts: an electric light bulb; a lamp shade; a base; a light bulb holder; and other parts like reflectors, wires and switches.
 

Your task

Design a paper lamp shade for your home. Your paper lamp shade should be combined with an electric light bulb; a lamp shade; a base; a light bulb holder; and other parts like reflectors, wires and switches to make a complete light fitting. The lamp shade may be made of paper of any kind. Build your lamp shade, assemble it into a complete light fixture, and test it. Work on this project on your own, or together with a classmate.
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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.
 

Note for teachers

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