MYP Design The MYP Design Cycle Notes

The Design Cycle: Four Stages That Feed Each Other

1. MYP design marks how you worked, not only what you ended up with, so the design cycle is the working method and the mark scheme at the same time.
2. The four stages are inquiring and analysing, developing ideas, creating the solution and evaluating.
3. Each stage is one criterion, A to D, and each criterion is marked out of 8, so a full project is judged on 32 marks of evidence.
4. The first pass runs in order, because you cannot write a sensible specification for a product before you have researched who needs it.
5. After that first pass the order loosens, since a failed test at the evaluating stage sends you straight back to developing ideas with a known fault to fix.

Inquiring and Analysing: Earn the Right to Start Designing

1. Criterion A begins with a design situation, a real setting with a real client, such as a Year 7 form room with nowhere to put 28 pairs of muddy football boots.
2. You explain and justify the need for a solution, which means naming who is stuck and what the problem costs them in time, money, space or safety.
3. The design brief is a short statement of what will be made, for whom and why, written before any sketching.
4. Primary research is what you collect yourself: an interview with the form tutor, a tape measure reading of the alcove, a timed count of the morning queue at the boot rack.
5. Secondary research is what other people already made: a supplier's drying time for treated pine, a retailer's stated shelf load of 25 kg, a datasheet for a hinge.
6. Analysing existing products means taking apart two or three real products that solve a similar problem, then saying which feature you will borrow and which you will reject.
7. The stage closes with a design specification, a numbered list of testable requirements such as "holds 28 pairs" and "fits an alcove 1.8 m wide".

Developing Ideas: Draw Enough to Choose Between Them

1. Criterion B wants a range of feasible design ideas, usually three or four genuinely different approaches rather than four versions of the same shelf.
2. Every idea is annotated, so each sketch carries notes on material, joint, size and the specification point it answers.
3. You then justify the chosen idea against the specification point by point, which is why a vague specification quietly wrecks criterion B.
4. The chosen design becomes a planning drawing: dimensioned orthographic views, an exploded assembly, a cutting list.
   1. Digital design swaps those for wireframes, a site map and flowcharts or pseudocode, with the same job to do.
5. The test of a planning drawing is simple: could another student build your product from it without asking you a single question?

Creating the Solution: The Plan Counts as Much as the Product

1. Criterion C opens with a plan: logical steps in order, a time estimate for each, and the tools and materials each step needs.
2. You then record what actually happened against that plan, in dated entries written as you go.
3. Photographs taken mid build are evidence of process; a single photo of the finished item proves almost nothing about how you got there.
4. Every change of direction needs a reason, for example swapping 3 mm acrylic for 4 mm because the laser cut edges kept cracking at the screw holes.
5. The product has to be finished enough to test, because a half built prototype limits everything criterion D can say about it.

Evaluating: Test the Product, Then Test Your Own Judgement

1. Criterion D starts with a testing method you design yourself, written clearly enough that another person could repeat it and get the same numbers.
2. Tests come straight out of the specification, so "holds 28 pairs" becomes loading 28 pairs of boots and counting what falls out.
3. User feedback counts as test data when it is collected properly, so five users answering the same three questions beats one friend saying it looked good.
4. You judge the success of the solution against each specification point, including the points you missed.
5. Improvements have to be named and specific, such as "move the drainage slots 20 mm lower", not "make it stronger".
6. The last part asks for the impact of the product on the client or target audience, which is where the wider purpose of the unit comes back.

Why It Loops: A Failed Test Is Data, Not a Disaster

1. Evaluating feeds back into inquiring and analysing, because a test result is new information about the user and the problem.
2. You rarely restart from zero; a boot rack that sags under load sends you back to developing ideas with the bracket spacing already identified as the fault.
3. Design teams outside school run the loop many times, and each pass is cheaper because it fixes a smaller thing than the one before.
4. In an MYP unit you normally complete one full circuit plus one or two short loops inside creating the solution, and those short loops are worth writing up in full.
5. A recorded failure with a fix reads as stronger design work than a build where nothing ever went wrong.

Evidence: What Each Stage Leaves Behind in the Folder

1. The design folder is the complete record of one trip round the cycle, and each stage drops its own kind of page into it.
2. Keep the folder in stage order so a reader can follow your decisions without hunting for them.
3. Date every page, because the sequence of your decisions is the only thing that proves you cycled rather than guessed.