What is the primary objective of Step 3 in the Engineering Design Process?

Step 3 in the Engineering Design Process focuses on brainstorming and developing solutions to the identified problem. This step is crucial because it encourages creative thinking and exploration of multiple ideas, which can lead to innovative and effective solutions. During brainstorming, teams typically generate a wide range of ideas and consider various approaches to tackle the design challenge at hand.

This step emphasizes the importance of collaboration and the sharing of diverse perspectives among team members, which often leads to more robust and inventive solutions. By focusing on generating a variety of potential solutions, it sets the foundation for the subsequent steps, where teams will later evaluate and refine these ideas into a feasible design.

The other options are significant but address different components of the overall process. Selecting the best solution occurs later, after multiple ideas have been generated and assessed. Creating a prototype is a hands-on activity that comes after the best solution has been identified. Evaluating solutions is an important step, but it also follows the initial brainstorming phase, as the evaluation cannot take place until there are actual solutions to assess.