DiscoG X Workshop 6: Designing for Real World Problems
- Jun 20
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 17
Ten years ago, DiscoG Coding Academy started with a simple idea: that students learn best not just from teachers, but from each other. Workshop 6 was proof of exactly that.
Designing for Real World Problems was Workshop 6 / 10. You can see the full series here.
Meet Esha and Nikhil
Esha Haria and Nikhil Mehta aren't guest speakers in the usual sense. They're former DiscoG students, both of whom sat their IGCSE Computer Science exams externally with DiscoG a year early, and both achieved a Grade 9.
Now completing their A Level in Design Technology, they returned to DiscoG t
o present the projects they've each been building, and both received full marks, 100%, for their work.
Esha designed a dental training model.
Nikhil designed a machine that recycles plastic bottles into 3D printing filament.
Both projects brought together electronics, coding, 3D printing, and design, and solved a real world problem.
A full circle moment
We've known Esha and Nikhil since they were in Year 5. Watching them stand in front of our current students, confidently walking through their own A Level projects, was something we won't forget.
It mattered just as much to the students watching. Many of our younger cohort clearly looked up to them, not as distant guest experts, but as people who sat exactly where they're sitting now. That's the whole idea behind DiscoG: a community where knowledge gets passed on, not just delivered.
Their parents were there too, watching all these years of work come together in front of them. Esha and Nikhil had been building these projects since starting their A Levels, and their parents told us afterwards how proud they were, seeing that work finished and presented with such confidence.
The design challenge
After Esha and Nikhil's presentations and a lively Q&A, students split into groups of four. Each group was given a theme, environmental, inspired by Nikhil's project, or medical, inspired by Esha's, along with a specific brief and set of requirements to design around.
Groups first brainstormed as a four before splitting into pairs: one pair focused on the design of their solution, the other on which materials, sensors, and motors to use, and why. Every choice needed a reason behind it, including thinking through the environmental impact of the materials involved, and for many students, this was a chance to put knowledge from previous workshops, weekly coding lessons, and for some, our electronics and robotics courses, to real use.
Esha and Nikhil moved between groups throughout, mentoring students and helping them look at their problem from angles they might not have considered.
Final presentations
At the end of the session, each group presented their project back to the room, the brief, their brainstormed ideas, their final design, and the reasoning behind every material and sensor choice.
A group designing a communication device for a patient who cannot speak or move.
They presented to Esha and Nikhil.
Other groups asked questions, and Esha and Nikhil put a few to each group too. It was lovely watching students answer with real confidence, because they'd genuinely thought through every part of what they'd designed.
And once again, parents were in the room, this time watching their own children present. Two generations of DiscoG students, each showing their families what they'd built, in the same session.
Join us this summer
DiscoG X is a short series of workshops for Years 5 to 9, but DiscoG Coding Academy runs weekly term-time classes during the academic year as well as Summer Holiday Bootcamps for students in Years 1 to 13.
Whatever stage your child is at, there is a place for them here.
Summer Bootcamps are intensive and hands-on, with Specialised Courses built around the same approach you've seen in this post. Spaces fill up quickly.
Not able to make summer? Register your interest for September term-time classes to be one of the first to hear when spaces open.
Any questions? Get in touch!
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