In the truss project, we were asked to design a truss that would carry an asymmetric load that would lie about 40% of the way along the truss in the +x direction.  As we were building the truss, we considered a few guiding principals:  the truss must be inherently asymmetric because the load is asymmetric, the smallest possible width was chosen for the span to decrease the total cost, and the straws nearest the loading point generally experience larger force magnitudes.  By following these principals, we were able to iterate through many truss designs.  We slowly honed our truss until we were pleased with our final results.  These are the some of the results of our process.