I'd like to start this post by saying thank you for making this thread. I've been meaning to redo how our team does design for a while, and this gave me the initiative to start it. So, thank you.

Anywho, this is what I came up with:

Saturday (kickoff day):
-Discuss game
-Objectives
-Ways of scoring
-Possible Strategies
-Get the general game strategy locked in
-Make a strategy for both offense and defense
-Have people decide which subgroup they want to work in during the design period

Sunday:
-No team meeting
-Have team members brainstorm different designs for their subsystem

Monday (may go on to Tuesday):
-Whole team meets
-Break up into system subgroups, and start making a list of designs and details for each subsystem part
-Subgroups draw out and list the details of each mechanism, and pick their top 3
-Each subgroup presents their top 3 ideas to the entire team
-The whole team goes over the pros/cons of each design presented
-After a detailed pro/con of each part, the team does one of two things:
-1: Choose the best design out of 3 for each subgroup
-2: Eliminate one of each subgroup design and vote again on the remaining two
-By the end of Monday/Tuesday, there is 1 remaining design for each subsystem of the robot. The team then finalizes those designs with the more intricate details (how, what), and the design is semi-locked.

Semi-locked means that for the most part, you won't change anything, but you can if you need to.