Puzzle Cube Portfolio

Unit 4 Project
Michael D Mann

Michael D Mann
Michael is a student from Philadelphia who moved
to raleigh in 2013. He is currently a member of the
engineering academy at Southeast Raleigh
Magnet High School. As well as being a student he
is a member of the Bulldog Marching Band, ACT
Theater Program, SRMHS Swim Team, and FRC
Team 435 The Robodogs. He also has a special
interest in Psychology, and hopes to attend
Stanford University after graduating.

Puzzle Design Challenge Brief

Client

Fine Office Furniture, Inc.

Target Consumer

Ages: High school aged

Designer

Michael D Mann

Problem Statement
A local office furniture manufacturing company throws away tens of thousands of
scrap hardwood cubes that result from its furniture construction processes. The
material is expensive, and the scrap represents a sizeable loss of profit.

Design Statement
Fine Office Furniture, Inc. would like to return value to its waste product by using it
as the raw material for desktop novelty items that will be sold on the showroom
floor. Design, build, test, document, and present a three-dimensional puzzle
system that is made from the scrap hardwood cubes. The puzzle system must
provide an appropriate degree of challenge to high school students.

Criteria
1. The puzzle must be fabricated from 27 hardwood cubes.
2. The puzzle system must contain exactly five puzzle parts.
3. Each individual puzzle part must consist of at least four, but no more than six hardwood
cubes that are permanently attached to each other.
4. No two puzzle parts can be the same.
5. The five puzzle parts must assemble to form a 2 cube.
6. Some puzzle parts should interlock.
7. The puzzle should require high school students an average of 5 minutes (300 seconds) to
solve.

A Puzzle Piece Brainstorm

Puzzle Cube Design

Some Design Features

We chose this solution to add an appropriate degree
of challenge for high school students because it
features a Diagonal Cube locking system in the
center. This requires specific spacial awareness
skills to figure out, and many high school students
struggle to find this locking system. Other feature we
wanted to include were pieces with 3 consecutive
blocks. This type of piece limits the number of
possible placement and arrangement for the puzzle
solver. While we made sure to pair them with smaller
assembly pieces to expand the possibilities of
arrangements which helps confuse them and
facilitates the problem solving process to prevent it
from being too challenging.

Preliminary Piece Designs

CAD Designs

Design Review
The multi-projections look ok and the number of them needed seems to be fine.
However, I think he might have missed a few dimensions on other projections
other than the front side view.
-ENB

Building And Prototyping

Research and Testing

Testing Results
On average the high school students took 375 sec (6 min 16 sec) to completely
solve the puzzle. This a near perfect degree of appropriate challenge for the
desired user groups.
We also found that there is no reasonable correlation between GPA, Race, Age,
Grade, or Engineering Experience Level and the amount of time it took to solve
the puzzle. However females on average solve the puzzle quicker and with a
higher standard deviation.

Results
Our design met all of the design requirements, and fit them perfectly. After
designing, building, and testing this product it clearly provides an appropriate
degree of challenge for the relatively short attention span of of a high school
student.