Slide outline for Lesson 4.11. Thirteen slides, one day. This is day 1 of Project 04, Design a Room. [Sal: slide 5 is yours. Tell the Oracle or Orangetheory story where the customer said they wanted one thing and needed another. Two minutes, no more.]
The Client Brief
- Lesson 4.11, the first day of the Design a Room project
- Today: who you are designing for, and what they actually need
- You are not designing your dream room. You are designing theirs.
Teacher notes
Image: a designer's desk with a floor plan, a tape measure, and a notepad with a list on it.
Do now
- A room is 10 feet by 12 feet. Draw it at 1/4 inch equals 1 foot.
- Put a door on a short wall and a window on a long wall. Use the symbols from Lesson 4.10.
- Label the scale.
- Two minutes to draw, one minute to check with a neighbor
Teacher notes
Day 5 of the daily floor plan stack. The check question is: does the door symbol show the swing? Sheets go in the stack; the stack is collected with the project in Lesson 4.15.
Who have you designed for?
- Hand vote: who has ever picked out something for another person's room?
- Who got it wrong?
- One story, twenty seconds
Teacher notes
Take one story and stop. The point of the vote is that designing for somebody else is normal and it is harder than it looks.
Client and brief
- Client: the person who pays for the design and lives with it
- Brief: what the client tells the designer
- A brief has six parts: who, the room, the money, the must-haves, the nice-to-haves, and the rules
- Every number in a brief is fixed. Everything else is yours to decide.
Teacher notes
Image: a one-page brief form with the six parts labeled down the side.
A client story
- [Sal: your Oracle or Orangetheory story. The customer who said they wanted everything, and the three things they actually needed.]
- The designer's job is to find the three things
Teacher notes
Image: [Sal: nothing needed, or a photo from that job.]
Two minutes. Land it on one line: a client tells you what they want, and you have to hear what they need.
Read a card like a designer
- Circle every number
- Underline the word "must"
- Star anything about safety
- Read it twice before you decide anything
Teacher notes
Image: the Okafor client card with the numbers circled, the word "must" underlined, and stars on the walker and night light lines.
Do this live on the projected card while students mark their own copy. Say the room out loud: 11 by 12, door 3 feet wide on an 11-foot wall, window centered opposite, closet 2 by 5.
Need or want?
- Need: the design fails without it
- Want: the design is better with it
- The test out loud: if the room does not have this, does the client's life get worse, or just less fun?
- Grandpa likes blue. Need or want? Could it ever become a need?
Teacher notes
Blue is a want. It becomes a need if it is the only thing that makes the room feel like his. Take two answers and move on. Do not settle it for them.
Meet the six clients
- Card 1 Okafor: Grandpa, 78, uses a walker. 11 by 12.
- Card 2 Delgado: two sisters, 13 and 8, one room. 12 by 14.
- Card 3 Nguyen: four people, a dog, one small front entry. 6 by 9.
- Card 4 Ahmed: a new baby in the parents' bedroom. 11 by 13.
- Card 5 Jordan and Sam: a tiny house, 8 by 24. The harder path, bigger budget.
- Card 6 Rivera: Marco, 15, uses a manual wheelchair. 12 by 14.
Teacher notes
Image: the six picture lines in a row: a walker, a desk and two beds, a coat hook and a boot, a crib, a tiny house on a trailer, a wheelchair.
One student per card reads it aloud, thirty seconds each. After each card the reader says one sentence: "This client's biggest need is ___."
Choose
- Pick your client and your path: A, a room for a client, or B, the tiny house
- Work alone or in a team of two
- Two students at one table may not pick the same card unless they are a team
- Write the client name and the path on your project sheet
- You may switch cards up to the end of Lesson 4.12 Day 1 with no penalty
Teacher notes
Say plainly that the tiny house is the harder path. Hand out the project sheet and Rubric 04 now so nothing on the rubric is a surprise later.
The Needs and Wants List
- Part 1: the facts. Client, room size, door, windows, closet, budget, the one rule.
- Part 2: copy every line from the card and mark it N or W, with a why
- Then add two hidden needs the card did not say out loud
- Part 3: the design problem sentence
- Twelve minutes. I am coming around with the clipboard.
Teacher notes
Image: the Needs and Wants List with the first three lines filled in for the Okafor card.
Model the first three lines on the board. Need: a 36-inch path from the door to the bed. Need: a chair with arms. Want: a TV. Then release them.
Hidden needs
- The card says he uses a walker. What does that mean for the floor?
- For the rug? For the height of the bed? For where the walker parks at night?
- A hidden need is a need the client never says because they assume you know
- Two per list, minimum
Teacher notes
These are the questions that separate a design from a decoration. Every card has them: the bunk bed rail, the anchored dresser, the 27 inches of knee space, the fold-down table.
The design problem sentence
- One sentence. Name the client, the need, and the limit.
- "______ needs a room that ______ within ______."
- Example: "Grandpa Okafor needs a bedroom he can cross safely with a walker within 11 feet by 12 feet and $400."
Teacher notes
Then the swap. Trade lists with a pair who has a different client and ask one question: what happens to the design if you ignore that need? Revise the sentence if the question showed a hole. Read two sentences aloud, one Path A and one Path B.
Exit slip
- Tear off the bottom of the list
- My client is ___
- The one thing this room fails without is ___
- The one thing I am not sure how to fit is ___
Teacher notes
Two students read theirs. Sort the slips by client. The "not sure how to fit" answers are the board examples for tomorrow. Tomorrow the scale plan starts, and the room size on your card is the outline you draw.