Lesson video

Hello, thank you for joining me for your design and technology lesson.

My name is Mrs. Conway and I will be guiding you through your learning today.

So today's outcome is, I can define a design brief from my opportunities.

So we're going to be looking at how to actually write a design brief and how to come up with the idea for the design brief.

These are our keywords.

We have design opportunity, design fixation, and design brief.

I'll go through each one of those as we work through the lesson.

So the first thing we're going to look at then is analysing design briefs.

Now the context for this particular unit is student living.

Now design opportunities are developed from exploring the design context.

We really need to look into that and to get a really good idea and an understanding of it to be able to develop and come up with design opportunities.

A design opportunity is a chance to create or improve a product, a system, or a service by identifying a problem or an unmet need.

Now, Izzy, Andeep, and Alex, all identified design opportunities in the exploration of the context 'student living.

' Now Izzy came up with this design opportunity, "Students move house every year and need to easily pack and move with all of their belongings." Andeep came up with this design opportunity, "Space is problem for a lot of students living out of one room in halls of residence." And halls of residence is where a lot of students live in their first year of university.

"I could consider how to save space in the storage of everyday items that a student needs." And Alex came up with this, "I'm going to focus on students having to share everyday items in the kitchen and many students bringing the same items and losing track of who the equipment belongs to." Now the next stage is to choose which design opportunity you are going to take forward, as you may have come up with several.

As you decide this, you're thinking which one is the most suitable to take forward into that iterative design process.

The key is the more interest you have in the design opportunity, the more likely you are to produce exciting design solutions.

So don't pick something because it looks easy.

Pick something that because it interests you and you're a little bit more excited about it.

Remember, and this is really important, at this stage you do not need to know what you are designing.

So if you're sitting there thinking, "I don't know what the solution is, so I shouldn't pick that design opportunity," please ignore that thought.

It's actually perfectly normal to worry about that, but it's really important just to keep an open mind at this particular stage.

To do that is to avoid design fixation, which you really don't want to do.

So if you have got an idea already, actually that might go against you because that is design fixation.

Design fixation is when you only consider one possibility and then sometimes because of that you miss an even better solution.

Right, let's just do a quick check for understanding, what is it called when you only consider one possibility and then sometimes miss an even better solution? Is it A, iterative design, B, design fixation, or C, user-centered design? Pause the video here just to take a moment to think about your answer.

And the correct answer was B, design fixation.

So design fixation is when you only consider one possibility and that results in sometimes missing an even better solution.

So let's look into what a design brief actually is.

A design brief is basically a short statement and it outlines the design opportunity as well as identifying a primary user's initial needs and wants.

And this provides focus, focus for you to do your researching and your designing.

And that design brief will be unique to you, so it'll be different to anyone else in your classroom.

Now, successful design briefs will be relevant to the context.

They'll identify a primary user and their initial needs and wants.

They'll provide an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution.

And be non-specific, as this can lead to design fixation.

They'll also be informed by initial investigations and research.

Let's just do another quick check for understanding.

Successful design briefs will be.

Non-specific, easy, relevant to the context and non-informed.

Pause the video here just to think about your answers.

How did you get on? The correct answer there was two correct answers to this, A, non-specific and also C, relevant to the context.

Well done if you got those right.

Now your user is the person you are designing your product for.

And if you remember, I just mentioned that you do mention your user's wants and needs is part of your design brief.

Now, for this particular context, your primary user is actually given within the context because it's given as students who are looking at student living.

But of course students can be very varied.

We can go all the way from about four years old, up to about 21 and beyond because of course you can have mature students as well.

So students can vary in ages as well as locations of study.

And of course their wants and needs would vary massively as well.

Let's just do a quick check for understanding.

It is important to identify who your primary users are because they may have different something and something.

Pause the video here just to take a moment to think about your answer.

And the correct answer, it is important to identify who your primary users are because they may have different needs and wants.

Well done if you got that right.

Now, Andeep has thought about who could be his primary user for his chosen design opportunity.

Let's just remind ourself of his design opportunity.

Students move house every year and need to easily pack and move with all of their belongings.

Now, his primary user, he's thinking a university undergraduate student moving from halls of residence into private housing.

The other option he's got is a mature university postgraduate student needing new housing each year.

So we can pick between those two.

So it's important that you narrow down and then choose who your primary user is going to be.

Now Andeep's narrowed down now from those two options, and it's just explained this, "My sister is an undergraduate student at university and so I'm going to choose her as my user.

She's in the middle of her first year at university." So his primary user is my sister who currently lives at halls of residence at university.

Now he's gone to actually speak to his sister to really get an idea of her initial needs and wants.

So whoever you pick as your primary user, you do need to be able to gather their needs and wants.

So make sure it's a real person.

So the initial needs for Andeep here, his sister wants saving space as her room is small.

She wants to be able to organise her art supplies for her course and the ability to transport her art supplies when of course she's moving house.

She also wants something that looks cool as well.

She doesn't want it to look a little bit rubbish in her room.

Okay, it's gonna be over to you now to do your first task.

The first thing I'd like you to do is choose your design opportunity.

You may have several, so now's the time to narrow it down to one.

Remember, you don't need a solution at this particular point, so don't panic about that.

Just pick the one that interests you the most.

I'd then like you to identify your primary user, making sure that primary user is someone that you think or hope to be able to get access to, to be able to talk to.

And at this stage I'd like you to just consider their needs and wants.

You may be able to go and find out what those are, but if you can't just at this stage, think about what those possibly could be and then you can go and verify those and find out what those needs and wants could be at a later stage.

Okay, pause the video here to get on with this task and good luck.

Okay, let's look at an example of what you may have included or may have done as part of your answers.

So Andeep has chosen his design opportunity here, and that's what you needed to do for task one.

Students move house every year and need to easily pack and move with all of their belongings.

Remember, this is just a design opportunity.

This isn't a solution or a design brief at this stage.

He then goes on to identify, as part of task two, who his primary user is, as well as identifying their initial needs and wants.

So he's identified his primary user as my sister who currently lives in halls of residence at university.

And he's also found out her initial needs, saving space as her room is small, organising her art supplies for her course, ability to transport her art supplies and her initial wants, which was something that looks cool.

Hopefully you've broken yours down in a really similar way.

So for task one, you've got a design opportunity that really interests you.

And for task two, you've identified your primary user and broken down and you just included some initial needs and some wants as well.

Well done if you've done that kind of system in that way of laying that out.

Obviously your answers will be slightly different, in fact, they'll probably be very different 'cause it's very personal to you and your process.

Okay, next we're gonna look at define a design brief.

So we've worked out our design opportunity.

We now need to actually write it up as a design brief using that knowledge of our primary user and their needs and wants.

Now you can use the following pieces of information to help us write a design brief.

So of course you can use your chosen design opportunity.

You can also use the knowledge of who the primary user is, the primary user's wants and needs, and any of the research carried out so far, such as things like product analysis or product disassembly that may also be really useful.

You may not use those.

It'll be completely dependent on what you found out and whether you've seen that as being useful at this stage.

Now, when writing, we must remember the success criteria of what makes an effective design brief.

Let's just remind ourselves of what that is.

We want a design brief to be relevant to the context.

We want to identify a primary user and their initial needs and wants.

We also want to provide an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution.

And we want it to be non-specific as this can lead to design fixation.

We also want it to be informed by initial investigations and research, just like I mentioned on the previous slide.

Let's just do a quick check for understanding on that then.

How can you avoid design fixation when writing a design brief? A, conduct lots of research, B, be non-specific, C, be specific or D, conduct minimal research.

Pause the video here.

Just take a moment to think about your answer.

And the correct answer was B, be non-specific.

So to avoid that design fixation when you're writing a design brief, you want to be non-specific.

So let's look at some examples of that.

Sofia has written a design brief for her design opportunity.

So here she's written, "Design pocket type storage that clips onto the side of a bed with velcro to help store books when reading and studying late at night.

The solution must appeal to students." Now what has Sofia got right and what has she missed? Feel free to pause the video, just take a moment to think about that.

So I'm just gonna go through that again.

"Design a pocket type storage that clips onto the side of the bed with velcro to help store books when reading and studying late at night.

The solution must appeal to students." Now let's think about our success criteria here.

It's relevant to the context.

Wonderful.

However, she has identified a primary user and their initial needs and wants, but also she hasn't really gone into much detail here because she's just kept it quite vague, as students.

She has provided an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution, but she's been quite specific.

So she's gone into actually the fact that she wants it to clip up to the side of the bed, she's going to use velcro.

And so she's narrowed herself quite early by being too specific, which means that she could fall into the realms of design fixation.

She's also not really used or been informed by her initial investigations and research to guide this as well.

So Sofia has written another design brief for her design opportunity.

It now says this, "Design an innovative solution to enable books and study material to be stored near the bed.

The solution must appeal to university and school aged students, not be too bulky or get in the way of sleeping comfortably.

The product needs to be flatpack to make it more sustainable product and also to keep the price lower for students.

Now, how has Sofia improved her design brief here? Again, pause the video here just to go through it again and have a little think about that, thinking about the success criteria.

Okay, so how has she improved it? She's removed the final design idea before she was talking about something that clicked onto the side of the bed with velcro.

She's now removed that and she's kept it much more non-specific and to hopefully avoid design fixation.

So what she has said is an innovative solution to enable books and study material to be stored near the bed.

She's also highlighted the needs and wants from the primary user and highlighted the primary user a little bit better as well.

So she's stated that it's university and school age students rather than just students as a vague statement.

And she's also stated that it's not to be too bulky or get in the way of sleeping comfortably, which is those primary users needs and wants.

She's also explained that she needs to keep that price lower for those students as well.

So that was obviously another need or want from the primary user.

Okay, it's gonna be over to you now to have a go.

I'd like you to write a design brief for your chosen design opportunity.

Now remember, you can use the success criteria to help you to do this.

It needs to be relevant to the context and our context is student living.

It needs to identify the primary user and their initial needs and wants, and you did that in task A.

It needs to provide an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution.

It needs to be non-specific so you don't fall into the trap of design fixation and narrowing yourself too soon.

And you also want it to be informed by initial investigations and research that you may have carried out.

Okay, pause the video here to have a go at this task and good luck.

Let's look at Andeep as an example for you to compare your answers to.

So Andeep identified the following design opportunity and determined who his user would be.

And in the end, he's actually chosen on this design opportunity, "Space is a problem for a lot of students living out of one room in halls of residence.

I could consider how to save space in the storage of everyday items that a student needs." And he also identified his user.

"My sister is an undergraduate student at university and so I'm going to choose her as my user.

She's in the middle of her first year of university." Now just compare your answer to Andeep's and also think about the success criteria.

So this is Andeep's design brief, "Design a storage solution for arts and craft supplies that is compact and transportable.

The product needs to help save space.

The solution must appeal to university aged students and be able to be manufactured at an affordable price for students." Now if we just compare his answer to the success criteria then.

It's relevant to the context.

He's identified a primary user and their initial needs and wants.

He's also provided an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution.

He's been non-specific as this can lead to design fixation and is also been informed by initial investigations and research.

So just compare your design brief to Andeep's as well as using the success criteria as a bit like a checklist to actually be able to compare and evaluate your own design brief.

Okay, let's summarise today's lesson then.

Today we've been at defining a brief from design opportunities.

So design opportunities are developed from exploring the design context.

And the more interest you have in a design opportunity, the more likely you are to produce exciting design solutions.

Now at this stage, you do not need to know what you are designing and you're encourage to keep an open mind to avoid design fixation.

A design brief is a short statement outlining the design opportunity and identifies a primary users initial needs and wants.

And this provides focus for researching and designing and will be unique to you.

So you should have a very different design brief to the people next to you.

Well done for all of your hard work this lesson and thank you for joining me.

I will see you soon.