Lesson video

Hello, my name's Mrs. Taylor, and I'm really pleased you can be here to join me for our lesson today.

Our lesson today is "Define a design brief from design opportunities: communal areas," and this is part of the "Iterative Design: Student Living" unit.

The outcome: I can define a design brief from my opportunities.

There are three key words: design opportunity, which is a gap or a need where a new or improved product would be beneficial.

Design fixation is focusing so heavily on one idea that creativity and problem solving become limited.

And design brief, a statement which explains what you are going to design and manufacture.

The lesson has two parts, analysing design briefs and define a design brief.

Let's begin with analysing design briefs.

The context for this unit is student living.

Design opportunities are developed from exploring the design context.

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

Izzy, Andeep, and Alex all identified design opportunities in the exploration of the context, "Student living." Izzy says, "Students move house every year and need to easily pack and move with all of their belongings." Andeep says, "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 Alex says, "I am going to focus on students having to share everyday items in the kitchen.

Many students bring in the same items and losing track of who the equipment belongs to." The next stage is to choose which design opportunity you are going to take forward into the iterative design process.

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

Remember, at this stage, you do not need to know what you are designing, and you are encouraged to keep an open mind to avoid design fixation.

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

Here we have a 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 and have a go.

Wonderful, let's check.

That's right, it's B: design fixation, well done.

A design brief is a short statement outlining the design opportunity, and identifies a primary user's initial needs and wants.

This provides focus for researching and designing, and will be unique to you.

Successful design briefs will be relevant to the context, identify primary user and their initial needs and wants, provide an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution, be nonspecific as this can lead to design fixation, and be informed by initial investigations and research.

Here we have another check for understanding.

Successful design briefs will be: A: non-specific, B: easy, C: relevant to the context, or D: non-informed.

Pause the video.

Fantastic, let's check.

That's right, it's both A and C.

They will be non-specific and relevant to the context, well done.

Your user is the person who you are designing the product for.

For this context, the primary user is given as students.

However, students can vary in ages, locations of study, as well as their wants and needs.

Here we have a check for understanding.

Read the sentence and complete with the missing words.

Pause a video and have a go.

Wonderful, let's check.

"It is important to identify who your primary users are because they may have different needs and wants." Well done! Alex has thought about who could be his primary user for his chosen design opportunity.

"Students move house every year and need to easily pack and move with all their belongings." His primary user is a university undergraduate student moving from halls of residence into private housing.

Or his primary user could be a mature university, postgraduate student, needing new housing each year.

Alex says, "My cousin is an undergraduate student at university, and so I'm going to choose him as my user.

He is in the second year of university.

So the primary user is my cousin who lives in a student house.

He has an ensuite bedroom, but shares the kitchen, dining, and living room." His initial needs are sharing everyday items such as pots and pans and small electrical appliances like the toaster, and identifying shared everyday items. His initial wants include something that is efficient to use.

We now have Task A.

Part one, choose your design opportunity.

Part two, identify your primary user and consider their needs and wants.

Pause the video and have a go.

Wonderful, let's have a look at some of the answers you may have come up with.

Alex says, "Students move house every year and need to easily pack and move with all of their belongings." His primary user is "my cousin who lives in a student house.

He has an ensuite bedroom, but shares the kitchen, dining, and living room.

The initial needs are sharing everyday items such as pots and pans and small electrical appliances like the toaster, and identifying shared everyday items." His initial wants, "something that is efficient to use." Well done! The second part of our lesson today is define a design brief.

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

Our chosen design opportunity, knowledge of who the primary user is, primary user's wants and needs, and other research carried out such as product analysis or product disassembly.

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

It must be relevant to the context, identify a primary user and their initial needs and wants, provide an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution, be non-specific as this can lead to design fixation, and be informed by initial investigations and research.

Here we have a check for understanding, how can you avoid design fixation when writing a design brief? Is it A: conduct lots of research, B: be non-specific, C: be specific, D: conduct minimal research.

Pause a video and have a go.

Great, let's check.

That's right, it's B, B: non-specific, well done.

Sophia has written a design brief for her design opportunity.

"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." What has Sophia got right and what has she missed? Is it relevant to the context? The answer is yes.

Identify a primary user and their initial needs and wants.

It has identified a primary user, but not really gone into detail about their needs or wants.

Does it provide an opportunity to design a creative and innovative design solution? Yes! Be non-specific as this can lead to design fixation.

This one is quite specific as it talks about being on the side of the bed and using velcro to store books.

It's quite specific, so this would lead to design fixation.

Be informed by initial investigations and research.

This design brief has not been informed by initial investigations and research.

Sofia has written another design brief for her design opportunity.

"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 a more sustainable product, and also to keep the price lower for students." How has Sophia improved her design brief? Removes the final design idea to keep non-specific and avoids design fixation.

Highlights needs and wants from the primary user.

We now move to Task B: Write a design brief for your chosen design opportunity.

Use the success criteria to help you.

Pause the video and have a go.

Wonderful, let's have a look at some of the answers you may have come up with.

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

"Design opportunity: Identifying belongings in shared spaces such as the kitchen of a student house is difficult.

I could consider how to store personal belongings." "The user, my cousin, is an undergraduate student at university.

He's in the middle of his second year of university.

He lives in a student house." Here is Alex's design brief: "Design a storage solution for kitchen utensils and cutlery.

The product needs to help save space and must be efficient to use.

The solution must appeal to university-aged students and be able to be manufactured at an affordable price for students." And when compared to the checklist, Alex has identified that he has met all of the success criteria, well done.

We now have a summary of our learning today.

Design opportunities are developed from exploring the design context.

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

At this stage, you do not need to know what you are designing, and you are encouraged to keep an open mind to avoid design fixation.

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

This provides focus for researching and designing, and will be unique to you.

I'm really pleased you could join me for this lesson today.

Thank you, and well done.