All these brainwaves... the first thing the inventor should do before even thinking about building their prototype is check to see how many times it's been attempted before, and then ask themselves why previous attempts have never succeeded.
I'm never quite sure about that bit. I mean, I've come up with good ideas, got a partway through an implementation, and then discovered something that solves the same problem that I hadn't previously found because of unintuitive naming, poor documentation or whatever. Happens all the time in software.
Also, it's something of a truism that Young People aren't half as good at using the internet as we expect them to be. They might just be crap at research.
But I can't help wondering if you've got this neat idea for an Innovative Design Project, it's best not to bother and plough on regardless. They don't seem to lose many marks for lack of originality, or indeed engineering common sense.
I'd have a lot more respect for them if they just said "hubless bikes are silly, but they look awesome, and we're going to molish one..."; "we've been playing with blinkenlights, and had a go at fitting some to a bike helmet..." or "we're so amazingly primitive that we still think bluetooth-enabling things so they can be controlled by an app is a pretty neat idea"
