Engineering starts young.

I found this methodology that someone developed as a child and has used it throughout his career to be quite interesting. I thought it was worth posting.

His methodology was developed for building Lego ships. (His favorite models to build.) He used it throughout his career and eventually sold his product to Macromedia later to become their flagship "Flash" product that is used by millions of computers around the world today.

1. Choose a problem: Build a LEGO ship.
2. Develop a vision: What sort of ship will it be? How big will it be? What will it carry?
3. Build: Build the framework of the ship.
4. Fill in the details: Design and build the details of the ship, ramps, doors, etc.
5. Test: Drive the cars around the ship and sail the ship while exploring the house.
6. Refine: Take parts of the ship apart and make them better.
   
7. Learn: Take what you learned from building this ship and use it to build a better one next time.

You can read the article (and who developed this method) here. It's a great story.