MYP Design Explaining and Justifying the Need for a Solution Notes

Strand A i Asks You to Prove, Not to Announce

1. The first strand of Inquiring and analysing asks you to explain and justify the need for a solution to a problem for a specified client or target audience.
2. Two IB command terms carry the weight there: explain means give a detailed account including reasons, and justify means give valid evidence to support a conclusion.
3. Explaining on its own leaves you with a description of a situation, and justifying adds the proof that the situation is worth six weeks of somebody's time.
4. Criterion A is marked out of 8, and the highest band expects the need explained and justified in detail rather than merely stated.
5. The written part of this strand normally runs to half a page, with the evidence it points to sitting behind it.

A Need Is Something Somebody Loses Without It

1. A need is the gap between what people can do now and what they have to be able to do.
2. Test any claimed need by asking what happens if nobody designs anything at all.
3. If the honest answer is that things carry on slightly less neatly, you have found a preference.
4. If the answer is that 7B loses ten minutes of a fifty minute lesson every week, you have a need with a size attached to it.
5. Wants and needs separate on consequence, because a want improves an experience while a need prevents a loss.
6. State the loss in units somebody else could go and check: minutes, pounds, ruined sheets, trips across a room.

Evidence Beats Adjectives Every Time

1. "Lots of students struggle with this" is an assertion, and it does the same work as leaving the line blank.
2. "22 of the 28 students in 7B said they had damaged a painting this term" is evidence, and it also tells you how big the job is.
3. Useful evidence includes a count, a measurement, a photograph with a ruler in shot, a direct quotation from the client, or a figure from a manufacturer's data sheet.
4. Every claim you make should have its supporting evidence within arm's reach on the same page.
5. Photographs earn their place when they show the failure happening, so a picture of paint smeared down a radiator beats a picture of a tidy art room.
6. Never invent a figure, because an honest "I counted 14 over two weeks" is stronger than an impressive number you cannot source.

Point at Your Evidence, Do Not Retell It

1. The justification is an argument, so the raw tally charts and transcripts belong on the research pages behind it.
2. Write the claim, then point to the page or appendix where the interview transcript or count sits.
3. That keeps the justification readable at roughly 150 to 250 words while the evidence stays open to inspection.
4. Both primary and secondary sources count here, and the next two articles cover how to gather each kind properly.
5. Label every piece of evidence clearly enough that somebody who has never met your client can follow the link from claim to proof.

The Need Comes Before the Product Idea

1. "Year 7 needs a wall mounted drying rack made from 6 mm plywood" is a product description that has quietly skipped the argument.
2. The need version reads "Year 7 needs a way to dry 30 A3 sheets flat within one lesson without using floor space".
3. That second sentence can be answered by a rack, a rail, a trolley, a washing line or a change to how the last five minutes of a lesson run.
4. Naming the product this early also makes your later idea development look decorative, because the decision was already taken on page one.
5. One useful check is to cross out every noun naming a physical object and see whether the sentence still says anything.
6. Keep the product idea in your notebook and let the design brief and specification bring it in when they are ready.

Build the Justification as a Four Move Argument

1. Move one names the client or target audience and sketches the situation in a single sentence.
2. Move two states the problem, reusing the one line problem sentence you wrote at the start of this unit.
3. Move three lays out two or three pieces of evidence showing the problem is real and giving it a measurable size.
4. Move four says what changes once a solution exists, quoted in the same units as the evidence so the two can be compared.
5. Four moves, a short paragraph each, and the strand is finished.
6. Read it back and ask whether a stranger would now agree the work is worth doing.

How Justifications Lose Marks

1. The commonest failure is a page describing the situation in detail that never once states a consequence.
2. The second is evidence collected after the design brief was written, which reads as decoration added to justify a decision already made.
3. The third is a need borrowed whole from the internet, such as a global food waste statistic, with nothing connecting it to your client.
4. The fourth is a need only the designer holds, where the so called client turns out to be the student writing the folder.
5. All four are cured by putting a named person, a counted number and a date into the first three sentences.