Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Bishop, and I will be your Design and Technology Teacher for today.

We have been studying a unit called Electronics, Simple Circuits, and Switches.

Today we are on lesson six of 10.

In today's lesson, we will be generating ideas for our electrical systems and choosing materials and components.

I hope you're in a nice calm and quiet place and ready to begin.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some paper, and you will also need a pencil to write and draw with.

You may also need some other equipment today such as modelling materials, a computer or a tablet, and some electrical components.

In today's lesson, I hope you've begun by completing your intro quiz.

If you haven't done that, why don't you exit our lesson and try and do it now.

Maybe we'll start with looking at how we generate ideas for our night light.

Then we are going to look at investigating current night lights that are available to buy.

After that, we're going to look at how we might design night lights and how we might make night lights.

Finally, today, I would like you to complete your exit quiz.

Finally, in today's lesson there are some keywords.

I will say each keyword, and I would let you to repeat them after me.

I will also read a definition of the keyword.

The first keyword is prototype.

Can you say the word prototype? Prototype is an early sample, model or release of a product built to test a concept or a process.

Our next word is pros.

Can you say the word pros? Pros are the good or positive points about a product.

Our next word is cons.

Can you say the word cons? Cons are the bad or negative points about a product.

Now we can start generating ideas for our electrical systems and choosing different components and materials today.

So remember, that we are designing and making a night light.

I wonder what you think of these night light designs? Would they be suitable for your user or for your purpose? What do you notice about them? Why do you think that they are designed in this way? What makes them suitable or safe for the user? Here are some more examples of night lights, and these have been designed with a baby as the user.

What makes these night lights suitable for the baby? What else makes them safe? I think they're suitable and safe because they've been designed using plastic, which is an electrical insulator, which stops the baby from getting shocked.

And also they are using LED lights, which produce very little heat, so the baby will not get burned.

And they look very easy for the baby to use.

Here are some more night lights, and they have been designed with different purposes and users in mind.

Which one of these do you like the best? Why do you like it the best? What would make it best for your user or best for your purpose? Also, I've got some other examples of night lights.

What do you notice about these night lights? What makes them suitable for the users? How are they being made safe? I can notice that some of them are made from, again, electrical insulators, keeping them safe for users to use.

They also, some of them have very simple design, the simple switches, making them easy for the user to use.

Maybe some of these designs might be similar to the design that you want to design within our next few lessons.

Now remember, we were making a prototype of a night light.

We still want to make sure that it is robust and easily used by our end user.

We did create a design brief together, and our design brief said that we were going to design, make, and evaluate a battery-operated night light.

We chose a user, so who was the user for your night light? Could it have been yourself, or a younger child, or a reader of books, or grandparents, or maybe some friends? Perhaps it was a different user, but make sure, as you're designing, making, evaluating, that you're keeping that user in your mind at all times.

We also chose a purpose for our night light.

What was your purpose for your night light? Was it to provide a light to read or to help a child to sleep? Was it to make a nice calming atmosphere? There were many other purposes too.

What was the purpose of your night light? Or we also thought about what would our night light look like? What would it look like? It needs to be visually appealing to the user, but it also needs to be safe and easy to use.

Think about this question now.

Designers always sketch a product before they begin to make it.

That is actually false.

Some designers actually start making to see if an idea works, then they might go back and sketch a design, editing and improving it as they go along.

Some designers, however, do sketch first, and then they start to make.

Then as they start making, they actually alter and change the designs and sketches.

You have to choose what's going to be best for you today.

You're a designer, and you're designing a prototype of a night lamp, and you have to think about where you need to start and what's going to be best for you.

And we call this the design cycle, and where are we start on it depends on what works best for us as a designer.

There are four key bits on the design cycle.

There's investigate, design, make, and evaluate, and all four parts are linked together, and we can move backwards and forwards on the design cycle, working in a way that suits us best.

So we might start with investigating, understanding the problem that our user faces, what they need our night lamp to do, and investigating any related information and product.

We might start with the design part of our design cycle, where we're looking at how we're going to design our housing or design our electrical circuit.

We might start by making.

We might make a production plan of what we're going to make and how we're going to make it.

We might think about what tools or materials we want to select which will help us to make our prototype of our night light.

We might start with evaluate, where we think about the user first, and we think about what the user needs to make the night light the best it can be.

The design cycle is really useful because we might start in one area and move back to another.

So you might start to make a night light, but then as you make it, we might evaluate it and test that and find that we've got a problem, so we might go back to the design stage again.

We might move around the design cycle many times.

This is really important to remember as you start to design, make, and evaluate your product 'cause sometimes things do go wrong and using the cycle of going backwards and forwards can actually help you to make a more robust and fantastic product.

You may wish to start today by investigating night lights, that's one area that you could start on the design cycle.

Let's look at it together.

Now, we might start by researching the electrical products that are similar to ours.

We'll have to ask an adult supervision to do this, and you can use the internet to investigate electrical products that also meet your design brief.

It's going to actually help you, as you can think of the pros and cons of current night lights, and that might help you thinking about how you want your night light to be designed and made.

You'll have to examine each night light that you find carefully to find out which designs would be best for you or the user.

So here's an example.

So here I've got a night light shaped as a flower, and on one side I've written about pros, and the other side, I could write about cons.

And I've added some questions to this slide to help you.

As I was thinking about the pros of the night light.

I would think, what do you like about this product? How does the product meet the needs of the user? Why is it a good night light? And I can answer all those questions to help me think about the pros of that night light.

On the other side, I could think about the cons, and that means, what do you not like about this product? Why does it not meet the needs of the user, and what would you improve about this product if you were to design and make it? Here's an example where I filled that in for you.

We're taking this product, the jar, right, and I thought about the pros of it and the cons of it.

I've written it on each side.

The pros that I can say are that this design uses a recycled glass jar.

It also uses LEDs, which only uses a small amount of electricity.

Both of these factors mean it is good for the environment.

This would appeal to the users of my night light.

Whereas, on the other side, I've identified some cons.

This night light needs a lot of LEDs, which I can see inside, which might make it quite expensive to make.

And this electrical product might also be dangerous for younger users to use by themselves, as glass can be easily broken, if dropped, into sharp pieces.

That's what I'd do if I wanted to start investigating as my first point of call today.

I might decide though, that I want to start by designing my night light, and I can use a pencil and a paper to think today and to think about my design.

Some people would like to start with this.

You can sketch and alter your designs and evaluating them, checking that it meets the design brief today.

You might investigate and make models as you work to find solutions to problems you come across, and this is all part of our design cycle.

We move backwards and forwards on the cycle.

You might decide that actually, no, I want to design by making my night light today.

But actually maybe what you could do is, you could start by making a prototype of your product.

As you make it, you might actually start to test and evaluate it, checking that it meets your design brief.

You might also investigate solutions to find problems that you come across.

Think carefully about how your product functions and how you might make your prototypes fit for your user.

Where will you start on the design cycle? Will you start by investigating current products or designing and sketching different ideas? Will you think about making prototypes and seeing if they work for your users? Or will you start with evaluating? Wherever you start, remember, that you can move backwards and forwards on the design cycle, and it's very important that as a designer that you think what works best for you.

Now, I want you to pause the video to complete your task.

I want you to generate night light ideas.

Think about the night light that you're designing and making, generate ideas with the electrical system or for the housing or model.

You can decide what to do first, depending on your way of thinking.

Pause the video now to complete your task.

Welcome back.

I wanted to say thank you for joining me in today's lesson.

I hope you have generated fantastic ideas for your night light today, whether you started with the electrical system or the housing of the prototype, really is up to you.

Perhaps you've started with sketching or researching ideas.

Maybe you started with making different types of prototypes.

Don't worry if you came across problems along the way, as we will continue this journey next time we get together.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Now, if you do want to, you could share your work with Oak National.

You have to ask a parent or carer to share your work on Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I'm really looking forward to seeing you again.

In the meantime, I hope you stay safe and happy.

Good-bye.