[Aren Siekmeier]

As BJC said, make sure to well define the problem you're solving before starting to solve it. Most people would call this your game strategy. There are some useful exercises here, including human role playing, adapting old robots to see what kind of chassis and drivetrain features might be useful in getting around the field.

Once you know what you need to do, figure out how. Inevitably, there will be lots of different, great ideas. Some of these can be weeded out soon on based on complexity or feasibility, while others can stick around to be prototyped. And I'd like to emphasize something I've found from our build seasons: If a student or group of students is advocating an idea, but its still in abstract form, it stands no chance. They need to (maybe not fully, but mostly) spec out how their design will work so that it can be assessed in terms of cost, weight, interfacing with the rest of the robot, and prototyped. This year, I felt that our robot's overall design was very much defined by who stuck around to develop their ideas, rather than what ideas were shown to be the best.

Effective prototyping can help fill in a Weighted Objectives Table in a way that isn't fudged based on people's predispositions. We tried WOTs on day 3 with very little background information, and we had to abandon the results. I have never had a whole lot of success with them, but I believe that is why, so I still have faith in them (if used correctly) as a mediator of all the design ideas that people can become emotionally attached to. A scientific approach saves the day.