MYP Design What Design Is and What Designers Do Notes

Design: Solving a Real Problem for a Real Person

1. Design is the work of finding out what someone needs, then making something that meets that need.
2. Every piece of design starts with a problem that belongs to somebody, not with an idea that pops into your head.
3. The person or organisation who asks for the solution is the client, and the wider group who will use it is the target audience.
4. What you make at the end is called the solution, and in MYP design that can be a product, a model, a prototype, a system or a piece of digital media.
5. A solution counts as successful when it does the job the client actually needed doing.

How Design Differs From Art

1. Art answers to the person who made it, so the artist decides when a piece is finished and what it means.
2. Design answers to a client, so somebody else decides whether the outcome works.
3. That difference is why designers write a specification, a list of measurable requirements the solution has to meet.
4. A chair that nobody can sit on comfortably has failed as design, even if every visitor to the room stops to look at it.

The Six Things Designers Do Over and Over

1. Investigate the problem by talking to the client, watching users and studying products that already exist.
2. Define the requirements by turning everything found out into a written brief and specification.
3. Generate options by sketching or modelling several different ideas rather than committing to the first one.
4. Choose and justify one idea by testing each option against the specification and explaining the choice.
5. Make the solution by planning the steps, gathering resources and building it.
6. Test and improve by putting the solution in front of real users and recording what happens.

Product Design and Digital Design: Two Routes, One Process

1. Product design produces something physical, such as a storage unit, a piece of packaging, a lamp or a mechanical toy.
2. Product designers work with materials, tools, machines and manufacturing processes, so their constraints include cost of material, workshop safety and the time a process takes.
3. Digital design produces something that runs on a screen or a device, such as a website, an app interface, a game, an animation or a database.
4. Digital designers work with code, layout, media files and user interaction, so their constraints include screen size, load speed, accessibility and the skills of the person using it.
5. Both routes run on the same design cycle and are assessed against the same four criteria.

Constraints Are What Make It Design

1. A constraint is any limit the solution has to work inside, and every real design job has several.
2. Cost limits which materials and components you can specify.
3. Time limits how complicated the making process can be, which is why a two week project rules out hand-carved joints.
4. Skills and equipment limit what you can actually produce, since a design that needs a five axis CNC router is useless in a school workshop.
5. Safety and regulation limit sharp edges, small parts, electrical work and the data a digital product may collect.
6. Environmental impact limits material choices and pushes designers towards materials that can be recycled or repaired.
7. Designing without constraints is daydreaming, and the skill being assessed is making something good while every one of these limits pushes back.

Designers Are Responsible for What They Make

1. A design decision reaches everyone who uses the product, so it carries consequences beyond the person who made it.
2. Choosing a material decides how much waste the product leaves behind when it is thrown away.
3. Choosing an interface layout decides whether someone with limited vision can use the app at all.
4. Choosing a price point decides who can afford the solution.
5. MYP design asks you to state these consequences in your evaluation.