Design Your World is a hands-on engineering studio for young students who want to make
something real. Robots that drive. Pets that move when you tell them to. Inventions that
solve a problem somebody actually has.
Most STEM classes hand your child a kit and a set of instructions.
That is not what happens here. A kit with instructions produces a finished object and very
little else. The child follows steps, the thing works, and nobody learns what to do when it
does not.
Design Your World runs the other way around. Students are handed a problem, a bench full of
real components and a deadline. The first version usually fails. The second one fails better.
Somewhere around the fourth attempt they stop asking whether they are doing it right and start
reasoning about why the motor stalls on the incline.
That moment is the entire point of the studio. Everything else, the robots and the printed
pets and the trophies, is downstream of it.
Through camps, cohorts and competition teams since the studio opened.
0Running since 2012
Long enough that early students are now studying engineering themselves.
0Programme pathways
Robotics, invention, science fair and a build-it-yourself robotics course.
1Patent-holding coach
Every session is run by a practising engineer, not a rotating instructor.
The four pathways
Four ways in. All of them end with your child holding something they made.
They are not levels and there is no order to work through. Each one suits a different kind of
child, and the honest answer to which is right usually takes about five minutes of conversation.
Five things happen every time a student is at the bench.
The order shifts and the projects change, but this loop is the method. It is also, more or less,
how engineering works in an actual workplace.
1
Get hold of real tools
Not toy versions. Students use the drivers, the printers, the sensors and the software that
adults use, with the supervision that requires.
2
Try the idea anyway
Even when the coach can already see it will not work. A failure the child discovers is worth
more than a correction the child is handed.
3
Work the problem in steps
Break it down, change one variable, test again. This is the single hardest habit to teach and
the one that transfers to everything else.
4
Explain how it works
Out loud, to somebody else, without notes. If a student cannot explain their build, they do not
yet understand their build.
5
Put it in front of people
A showcase, a fair, a tournament table. Presenting to strangers is where the confidence
actually gets made.
The constraint we will not relax
Small groups are not a marketing line. They are the whole product.
Put twelve children around one robot and you get one driver, one talker and ten spectators.
Everybody goes home saying they did robotics. One of them did.
Real building time. Every student has their hands on the hardware in every session, not once a month when it is their turn.
Guidance that fits the child. The student who is three steps ahead gets pushed. The one who is stuck gets sat with.
Troubleshooting, taught properly. Finding your own fault is a skill, and it needs somebody watching who knows when to stay quiet.
Being known. Coach Tia knows what each student is working on and what they were stuck on last week.
The practical consequence: places are genuinely limited, and cohorts usually fill from the
waiting list before they are advertised.
One turn of a gear moves everything it touches
The person at the bench
Your child is coached by an engineer who does this for a living.
Letia Blanco founded Design Your World in 2012. Students call her Coach Tia. She is not a
franchise instructor working from a binder, and the difference shows up in the questions she
asks students when something breaks.
Holds a patent
For a nanoparticulate delivery system, a smart bandage. She has presented at multiple technical symposia.
Award-winning engineer
International winner of the Society of Women Engineers Distinguished New Engineer Award in 2018.
40 Under 40
Named by the Corridor Business Journal in 2023 for her work in the region.
Works in aerospace
A Value Stream Leader at one of the largest aerospace companies in the world, and a mother of two.
Competition is optional in every programme. What it offers is a deadline that is not negotiable
and an audience that is not family, and for a lot of children that combination changes something.
STAGE 01
Junior State Science & Technology Fair of Iowa
The elementary fair, open to grades 3 to 5, with regional events held
around the state each autumn. Students are interviewed at their board by judges who ask real
questions about method.
STAGE 02
FIRST LEGO League tournaments
Teams take their robot to the competition table for two and a half
minute matches, and separately defend their innovation project, robot design and teamwork in
front of judging panels.
STAGE 03
Invention Convention, regional to national
Student inventors present a problem, a prototype and a case for why
it matters. The pathway runs from local events through state competition and on to the United
States nationals.
From the families
What parents notice first is rarely the robot.
She came home and explained to her father, unprompted, why the gear ratio she picked
was wrong and what she was going to change. She is nine.
Parent of a FIRST LEGO League student
He has never finished anything. He finished this, and then he stood up in front of a
room of strangers and talked about it for four minutes.
Parent of an Invention Convention student
We tried a big chain programme first. It was fine. This is not the same thing. Coach
Tia knows exactly where my daughter is stuck before she says a word.
Parent of two Design Your World students
Before you ask
The four questions every parent opens with.
What ages does Design Your World work with?
The studio is built around elementary and middle school students, roughly kindergarten through eighth grade depending on the programme. Junior science fair is a grades 3 to 5 event. FIRST LEGO League runs from grade 2 upward. Invention Convention adapts to the child rather than the grade.
Does my child need any experience?
No. Most students arrive having never written a line of code or wired a circuit. What matters far more is whether they enjoy figuring things out and are willing to have a first attempt fail.
How big are the groups?
Deliberately small. The whole model depends on every child having their own hands on the build rather than watching somebody else drive. That caps the numbers and it is the main reason cohorts fill before they are advertised widely.
Do students have to compete?
Competition is available in every programme and required in none. Plenty of families come for the build experience alone. Others discover halfway through the season that their child badly wants a judging table, and we make that happen.
Small groups fill quickly. Start with a conversation.
Tell us your child's grade and what they love doing, and Coach Tia will tell you honestly which programme fits, when the next cohort opens, and what a term actually looks like. If nothing is a good fit right now, we will say so.
The bench, mid-session
