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Engineers are uniquely positioned to create solutions that do not yet exist. The National Academy of Engineering’s Changing the Conversation report includes specific messaging that engineers design the future. One can invent and integrate technology in new ways to make a future happen. Mechanical engineering students are well placed to become fluent with technology as well as achieving a better understanding of how one might apply that to create something novel and of value. Whether it be more efficient means for transportation that are less impactful on the environment, or a new widget that makes interactions more meaningful, there is a physical scale and scope of impact that mechanical engineers can impart directly with stakeholders and users. Because items imagined can be within the size of consumer products where solutions may be simply created and mocked up, there is a unique opportunity to better understand these students’ behaviors in designing and prototyping. This research project explores how a cohort of senior mechanical engineering students can design and prototype solutions for a problem today, and how their solutions are changed when asked to be placed out into the future. We are curious about the similarities and differences in their approaches along aspects of the design process (cognition) and in the design result (artifacts). This project allows us to explore how engineering students conceive of the breadth of impact of engineering on the future 5-10-20 years out through reviewing their work and classifying their work product.