Every Good Design Starts With Clear Requirements

Hey, I'm Atlas, and I want to tell you a secret that every great engineer knows: before you pick up a single tool, you write down exactly what your design must do and exactly what limits it must stay within. Those two things together are called requirements. Engineers split them into two groups. The first group is called criteria — that means the jobs your design must succeed at. For example: 'The bridge must hold a toy car weighing 200 grams (about as heavy as a small apple).' The second group is called constraints — those are the rules or limits you cannot break. Constraints control what materials you can use, how long you have, or how much you can spend. For example: 'You can only use craft sticks and glue' or 'It must be finished in one class period.' Here is why this matters. Imagine you spend an hour building an awesome paper bridge — and then your teacher says it had to hold five books, not one. You did not know the criteria, so you wasted your time! Writing requirements first means you know the target BEFORE you start. A handy trick: ask two questions before every project. Question one — What must it DO? Write every job down. Question two — What are my limits? Write those down too. Now you have a requirements list, and that list is your map. Engineers check their design against that map again and again until everything matches. That is how real bridges, phones, and even sneakers get made right the first time.