MYP Design Analysing Existing Products Notes

Somebody Already Solved Part of This

1. The third strand of criterion A asks you to analyse a range of existing products that inform the solution.
2. Product analysis means pulling apart what already exists, on paper or with a screwdriver, to work out which of its decisions were good ones.
3. Every product on a shelf carries thousands of hours of somebody else's testing, and reading that testing costs you nothing.
4. Copying is the wrong goal, because copying a product also copies the compromises it was forced into.
5. Choose products that solve the same problem as you, not products that resemble what you already plan to build.

ACCESS FM Gives You Eight Angles Instead of One Opinion

1. Left to themselves, most people analyse a product by saying whether they like it, which produces one sentence and no specification points.
2. ACCESS FM is a framework of eight headings that makes you look at the same object eight different ways.
3. The letters stand for Aesthetics, Cost, Customer, Environment, Size, Safety, Function and Materials.
4. Work through every letter even where the answer is short, since the heading you skip is usually where the interesting finding was hiding.
5. Each heading should end in a number, a named material or a verdict, and never in "quite good".

What Each Letter Actually Interrogates

1. A heading answered in three words has not really been answered.
2. Give each letter two or three sentences containing at least one fact or measurement you had to go and find.

Aesthetics, Cost, Customer, Environment

1. Aesthetics covers shape, colour, texture, finish and even the sound it makes, and the useful question is what each choice was trying to signal to the buyer.
2. Cost splits into the price on the shelf and the cost of making it, and the gap between them tells you how much of the price is brand.
3. Customer asks who it was aimed at, and the sharper follow up asks who it shuts out, since a jar lid needing a hard twist has already excluded a group.
4. Environment covers the conditions it lives in, so damp, heat, sunlight and rough handling, plus what happens at end of life, which is where recyclability and repairability sit.

Size, Safety, Function, Materials

1. Size wants real dimensions in millimetres taken with a ruler or callipers, plus its weight, because these numbers become constraints on your own design.
2. Safety asks how the product could hurt somebody and then what stops that, so look for rounded corners, guards, warning labels and standards marks.
3. Function asks what it is meant to do and how well it does it, judged by using it rather than by reading the box.
4. Materials asks what each part is made of and why, since a bracket moulded in ABS rather than pressed in steel is usually telling you about cost or weight.

Take It Apart, Not Just Look at It

1. Disassembly is the fastest way to learn how something was really made.
2. Use a charity shop find or something already broken at home, with permission, and never open anything that plugs into the mains.
3. Count the parts and the fixings, because six screws and no glue means the product was designed to be repaired.
4. Look at how the parts join, since snap fits, screws, welds and adhesive each point to a different production volume.
5. Photograph every stage as you go, since putting it back together is harder than it looks and the pictures are your evidence.
6. Check for ejector pin marks and a parting line, because both mean injection moulding and therefore a run of thousands.

Three Products Beat One

1. One product tells you what one designer decided, while three tell you which decisions were forced and which were choices.
2. Pick three that solve the same problem differently: a direct competitor, a budget version and something from a completely different sector.
3. Run all three through the same headings so the answers line up in one comparison table.
4. Where all three agree you have found a constraint, such as every drying rack spacing its shelves at least the short side of the paper apart.
5. Where they disagree you have found room to design something genuinely different.
6. Write one paragraph under the table saying what the comparison taught you, because a table with no conclusion is data rather than analysis.

Every Finding Must Become a Specification Point

1. Analysis that changes nothing about your design was a wasted lesson.
2. Convert each useful finding into a testable statement, so "the base was 400 g and did not tip" becomes "the base must weigh at least 400 g".
3. Write points using "must" or "should", since the "must" points are the ones your finished product will be judged against.
4. Attach a number or a test to every point, because "must be easy to clean" cannot be checked while "must wipe clean with a damp cloth in under 30 seconds" can.
5. Trace each point back to its origin, whether a product analysis, an interview or a published standard.
6. Carrying findings forward like this is what turns the strand into inquiry instead of filler.

Where Product Analysis Goes Wrong

1. Choosing three nearly identical products gives you three nearly identical answers and no range at all.
2. Analysing something you cannot get hold of leaves you with marketing photographs, which are lit to hide every join.
3. Copying an ACCESS FM table from an online example produces the words without any of the looking.
4. Padding every heading to the same length hides the one heading that mattered more than the rest.
5. Stopping at the table and never writing specification points leaves the whole strand doing no work for your project.