Our Top Members have all participated in atleast 1 Design Challenge and here's why...

I've been in two design challenges: Forget Me Not Design Challenge & In the Air Design Challenge

I can very accurately describe why I was attracted to those two: they had allocated budgets. I'm just not very good at taking allocated parts and constructing a whole project from them. I tried the design cycle like that before but I always end up with limited ideas. With the budget challenges, you get a certain set of parts but also the budget needed to add to those parts for a complete project. If I have the time I'm always up for a project, but I need to convince myself to carve out a chunk of my time for the challenge. This makes me evaluate the project with a cost to benefit analysis. It will cost my time for a particular benefit.

If the In the Air Design Challenge didn't have a budget, I would not have been able to participate. I didn't have any equipment at home to work with surface mount components. I used the budget to get the equipment and parts needed to do some basic surface mount work.

For the Forget Me Not Design Challenge I didn't have any parts or equipment at my home for prototyping, so I used the budget to get some.

The biggest problem with these types of challenges though, is getting all the parts you ordered. Some of the parts I ordered never, ever showed up.

The prizes are like the icing on the cake. The Forget Me Not Design Challenge, in my opinion, had the best prizes. Every competitor wanted that prize. There have been a few challenges that I might have been interested in, but the prizes weren't "ooh" or "ahhh" enough.

Just my two cents.

I've been in two design challenges: Forget Me Not Design Challenge & In the Air Design Challenge

I can very accurately describe why I was attracted to those two: they had allocated budgets. I'm just not very good at taking allocated parts and constructing a whole project from them. I tried the design cycle like that before but I always end up with limited ideas. With the budget challenges, you get a certain set of parts but also the budget needed to add to those parts for a complete project. If I have the time I'm always up for a project, but I need to convince myself to carve out a chunk of my time for the challenge. This makes me evaluate the project with a cost to benefit analysis. It will cost my time for a particular benefit.

If the In the Air Design Challenge didn't have a budget, I would not have been able to participate. I didn't have any equipment at home to work with surface mount components. I used the budget to get the equipment and parts needed to do some basic surface mount work.

For the Forget Me Not Design Challenge I didn't have any parts or equipment at my home for prototyping, so I used the budget to get some.

The biggest problem with these types of challenges though, is getting all the parts you ordered. Some of the parts I ordered never, ever showed up.

The prizes are like the icing on the cake. The Forget Me Not Design Challenge, in my opinion, had the best prizes. Every competitor wanted that prize. There have been a few challenges that I might have been interested in, but the prizes weren't "ooh" or "ahhh" enough.

Just my two cents.