Lesson 1 — Who Designs Our Tools? Needs, Wants, and Values

Summary

Learners explain that technologies are designed by people with particular needs, wants, and values. A worked example traces the bicycle through its need (travel farther and faster), its want (a smooth, fast ride), and its value (clean travel, no fuel). Learners then read a water filter, a solar lamp, a braille writing slate, or a fishing net the same way, seeing every tool as a person’s or community’s answer to what they needed and cared about — never as a thing that simply appeared.

Objectives

• Explain that technologies are designed by people with particular needs, wants, and values, and give an example. (D10.S1.06.01)

Connection

Hold any object near you — a cup, a shoe, a phone, a broom. Someone, somewhere, decided what problem it would solve, how it should feel to use, and what mattered enough to build into it. A tool is a person’s thinking made solid. Today you learn to read a tool the way you would read a person: what did its makers need, want, and value?

Materials

• Design triangle poster (the bicycle)
• Design triangle cards (water filter, solar lamp, braille slate, fishing net)
• Design triangle page
• Pencils

Preparation

• Print or draw the design triangle poster for the bicycle.
• Copy design triangle cards for each pair and a design triangle page for each learner.

Facilitator note

This lesson is written to the learner (“you”). The idea to land is every technology is someone’s answer to a need, a want, and a value — not magic, and not “just there.” Model the bicycle fully as a worked example before learners read their own card (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006). Keep it global and egalitarian: choose objects that span cultures and regions (a qanat, a dugout canoe, a braille slate) so no single place or people appears as the default “inventor.” Distinguish evidence from values: what a tool does and the problem it solves can be investigated; that clean travel or fair access matters are values a designer chose to build in. See docs/philosophy.md §4–5 and docs/facilitation.md.

Procedure

1. Gather (5 min). Recall from Grade 5: tools change daily life. Now ask the deeper question — who decided the tool would be this way? A tool is designed by people; it did not make itself.
2. Meet the bicycle (12 min). Look at the poster. Every design carries three things. The need — the problem it solves: carrying people and goods farther and faster than walking. The want — what makes it pleasant: a smooth, comfortable, fast ride. The value — what its makers believed mattered: clean travel, no fuel burned, no smoke. Say the triangle together: “need… want… value.”
3. Read your own tool (18 min). Take a card. The water filter (need: safe water to drink; want: easy to use every day; value: everyone, even a small child, deserves clean water). The solar lamp (need: light after dark where there is no grid; want: cheap and sturdy; value: light should not depend on costly fuel). The braille writing slate (need: writing for people who are blind; want: small and portable; value: everyone should be able to read and write). The fishing net (need: catch fish to feed a family; want: light to throw and strong to hold; value: taking from the water without taking everything). On your page, write or draw the need, the want, and the value — and one sentence on who likely designed it and what they cared about.
4. Check with a partner (10 min). Swap pages. Ask: “Does the triangle make sense? Did you name the need, the want, and the value — and the people behind it?” Fix anything unclear.
5. Close (5 min). A tool is not magic; it is a decision. When you ask “who designed this, and what did they care about?”, you begin to see the people inside every object.

Differentiation

• Support: Provide a card with the need already filled in and a sentence starter for the value; work one card aloud first.
• Extension: Compare two tools that answer the same need (a clay pot and a metal pump for water) and explain how different values shaped two different designs.

Assessment

• Formative (observation): Can the learner name a technology’s need, want, and value, and point to the people who designed it?
• Self-check: The learner asks, “Did I name the need, the want, and the value — and did I say who designed it and what they cared about?”

Home connection

Choose one tool at home and ask someone who uses it: what need does it answer, what makes it nice to use, and what value does it carry?

Resources

• The idea that technologies encode their designers’ needs and values is central to technology studies and is taught across cultures — from the qanat water channels of ancient Persia to the abacus and the dugout canoe; children’s references (Britannica Kids, DK’s How Things Work) document these designs and the problems they answer. The framing that design involves need, want, and value follows the curriculum’s “technology as shaped by people, not magic” commitment (docs/philosophy.md §4). On modeling a routine before independent practice, see Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006), https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1.