MYP Design Breaking the Making Process Into Logical Steps Notes

Criterion C Starts Before You Touch a Material

1. Creating the solution is criterion C, marked out of 8, and its first strand asks you to construct a plan for making that is logical and detailed enough for someone else to use.
2. You write the plan after Developing ideas has given you one chosen design and a set of dimensioned drawings, not while you are already queueing for the pillar drill.
3. A plan counts as logical when the steps sit in an order that actually works, so nothing late in the list undoes something done early.
4. Sufficient detail means a classmate who has never seen your design could pick the plan up and build the thing without asking you a single question.
5. Time, cost and materials get their own planning tools and are covered separately; the order of the steps is what matters here.

Break the Build Into Steps Someone Else Could Follow

1. Start by dumping every job that must happen into a rough list in any order, then sort that list afterwards.
2. A step is the right size when it has one clear finish line, so "cut the four legs to 320 mm" is one step while "make the frame" is really five.
3. Each step names the tool, the setting and the measurement, for example "drill 4 mm pilot holes 15 mm in from each end on the pillar drill".
4. Write every step as a command starting with a verb, because "sand the edges with 180 grit paper" reads as an instruction and "sanding is needed" does not.
5. Number the steps, so that later you can write "step 7 failed" in your making log instead of describing the moment all over again.
6. A typical MYP year 4 project lands somewhere between 15 and 30 numbered steps, enough to be useful without listing every screw.

Order Matters Because Some Steps Lock Others Out

1. A dependency is a step that cannot begin until another step has finished, and dependencies are what fix your order.
2. Cut all the parts before you assemble anything, because trimming a part to fit a frame that is already glued is slow and usually inaccurate.
3. Sand flat faces before assembly, since an orbital sander will not reach into a 40 mm internal corner once the box is closed.
4. Paint, varnish and wax go on after all the cutting and drilling, or every later operation scratches the finish you just applied.
5. Steps with setting time built in should start early, so the 30 minutes of clamping PVA needs runs while you do the short jobs.
6. Check the order backwards as well, reading from the last step upwards and asking what must already exist for that step to be possible.

Digital Builds Have the Same Logic With Different Steps

1. Criterion C applies to an app, a website or a short film exactly as it applies to something cut from plywood, so digital projects need a plan for making too.
2. Assets come before assembly, so export the icons, photographs and sound files first and build the screens that use them second.
3. Structure comes before styling, so lay out the HTML or the Figma frames and only then apply the colour scheme and the type sizes.
4. In a video edit the rough cut comes before colour grading and sound mixing, because any shot you delete later takes the grading work with it.
5. Plan a working version early, since a site with three pages that open in a browser is worth more than eight pages nobody has loaded.
6. Put file saving in the plan as a real step, such as saving a dated copy at the end of every lesson, so a crash costs you one session at most.

A Plan Is Only Good If It Survives the Workshop

1. Attach each step to a lesson or a date, so the plan can tell you whether you are ahead or behind rather than just what is remaining.
2. Flag the steps that need the laser cutter, the 3D printer or a teacher sign-off, because those are the ones that queue.
3. Leave one spare slot every four or five steps, since at least one job in every build takes twice as long as you guessed.
4. Add a checkpoint before anything irreversible, such as "dry fit the whole frame and check for square" sitting immediately before the glue-up step.
5. Keep the plan as a table in your design folder with columns for step, tool, material, time and safety, so a moderator sees all of it in one place.

Safety sits inside the step, not in a block at the top

1. Write the risk and the control next to the step they belong to, for example "step 9, tenon saw, use a bench hook and keep the free hand behind the blade".
2. Machine steps need the specific control named, such as extraction on and the lid kept closed on the laser cutter until the fumes clear.
3. A safety paragraph at the top of a plan gets skimmed once, while a line inside step 9 gets read at step 9.