Lesson video

Hello there, everyone.

My name is Mr. Booth.

Thank you so much for joining me today for this lesson on evaluation and refining processes.

This lesson is the last lesson in the unit of "Collaborative Design: Tactile Toys to Teach." And throughout this unit, we have been looking at working in teams to develop a product made from timbers.

In this lesson, we're gonna start to look at how we can evaluate our product against a set criteria, but also look at how we can then modify it to improve it, which of course is a vital part of the iterative design process.

Let's have a look at the lesson outcome.

So in today's lesson, by the end of the lesson, I would like you to be able to write an evaluation and identify further modifications to the design and also your batch process in your collaborative design teams. So once again, you are working together in your teams, which I'm sure you've been doing brilliantly throughout this whole unit.

And what we can do is we can look at how we can modify our product to make it even better.

Let's have a look at some keywords.

So our keywords for today quite obviously are evaluation.

And this, is course, checking how good something is and how to make it even better.

We have design outcome, this is your final product or solution, which you have been working on.

And then, of course, we have modifications, and this is all about making changes or adjustments to improve or alter a design because no design is perfect, which I'm sure you already knew.

So in today's lesson, we've got two learning cycles.

The first one is about evaluating a design.

So we're gonna look at ways in which you can do that, give you some real hints and tips on how you can do this really well, and also look at the reasons behind that, why it's so important to evaluate our designs.

The second learning cycle is using those evaluations to then modify your design.

So how can you make your design better? So let's get going.

Evaluating a design and finished product is a core part of the design process.

If you're following the iterative design process, this is one of the most vital parts of that before you go back to redesigning and look at how you can make your product even better.

Evaluations help to understand if the final design has addressed the original design objectives from the beginning of the design process.

And those design objectives could have been decided by your user, by your team, but by revisiting those, what we can actually do is look at if we have made a successful product.

So an evaluation measures the success of that final product, but it also highlights modifications that could be made to the product, but also to the process of making that product as well.

So a quick check for understanding.

An evaluation measures the? Creativity of the final product, the success of the final product, or the popularity of the final product.

Pause the video now have a go at this and come back when you've got an answer.

So if you answered the success of the final product, well done.

Embedding a practise of collecting and recording thoughts throughout the design and make process will support an evaluation and also help you analyse the whole process in order to make modifications.

You can do this out throughout the whole process and sometimes it'll be really obvious when you come to do something and you find it was quite difficult to do.

You can make a note of that.

Sometimes you might even get feedback from a user or something like that towards the end of a project when they're testing the product and that can be used for this process as well.

A good way of doing this is by using a team notebook that you can all add to or possibly just even sticky notes and stick them somewhere that you're gonna remember to document your experience throughout the design and making process.

This can encourage reflective thinking and help you as a team revisit important insights when you come to your evaluation stage.

So we're gonna be looking at our design specifications and also our design requirements because these can be used to support writing and evaluation.

Of course, the specification and requirements, they're identified very early on in the design process.

And these outline the intended objectives of the final design outcome.

You may have sought the opinion of end users or other stakeholders in the process to find out all the different information that you wanted to put in your specifications and requirements.

So that makes them a really good starting point for an evaluation.

Once you've identified them, they can be used as a checklist and that's a really nice way of doing an evaluation of the final outcome.

So a quick check for understanding.

What can be used to support with writing an evaluation? Materials knowledge, design specification, design requirements, initial design ideas? Pause the video now, have a go at this and come back to me when you've got an answer.

So if you answered design specification and design requirements, well done.

So here we have a nice example of a list of design requirements that can be used to evaluate a final design outcome against.

You might recognise them.

So the list included of the final product must: be an object designed for play; intended for children, so it's designed for children to use; impart knowledge, skill, or instruction, or even better, all three of those.

We wanted to include tactile interactions, so those children had to develop those fine motor skills.

Obviously be safe to use, important for all products, but especially products that are designed for children.

Be made from types of timbers.

Be designed and manufactured collaboratively within a design team.

And finally, be used as indoor or an outdoor environment.

So that's a really nice list that we decided very early on that we wanted our product to do, and we can actually use that for our benefit when we come to an evaluation.

So if we adapt that list of design requirements into a series of questions and then ask those questions to ourselves, what we can then do is develop an evaluation success criteria.

So let's have a little look how we can do that.

So the final design outcome.

Has it been designed for play? Is it intended for children to use? Does it impart knowledge, skill, or instruction? Or even more importantly, all of those? Does it include tactile interactions? Is it actually safe to use? Have we considered the safety of children when using this product? Is it made from types of timbers as the main source of material? Has it been designed and manufactured collaboratively as a team? And then finally, is it used indoor or outdoor in those environments? So there we have a nice set of questions that we can use to be able to evaluate our design.

And then, of course, what we can do is we can take those questions to our team, we can sit down, we can analyse that toy, and what we can do is we can answer them and write an evaluation.

It's really important at this stage that you explain your answers.

No matter what your questions are, you've got to be able to explain why.

So it's no good just answering yes and no in really short answers 'cause that's not really an evaluation.

We want to know why.

And that will also then aid you when you come to look at things like modifications.

So let's have a little look at what Lucas and Sam have come up with for one of these questions.

So let's look at the question, has the final design outcome been designed for play? So let's see what they came up with.

So they, of course, said yes.

Our final design outcome was a dinosaur teeth puzzle.

The users, the children, they have to place the correct teeth pieces into the dinosaur's mouth in the correct position.

They'll only fit in the correct position just like a jigsaw.

And then they have to clean the dinosaur's teeth using a toy toothbrush to prevent them from falling out again.

What a fantastic toy that is.

The puzzle is shaped like a dinosaur cartoon character's head, which adds to the playful element.

And, of course, that's really important.

I've got a four-year-old son and getting him to brush his teeth is actually quite difficult, so something like this I can see can really work.

So what you could say is you could say that from Lucas and Sam from their answer, they would get a big tick for that question.

Their evaluation of that product has been successful for that question of has the final design outcome been designed for play? So let's a look at another question for an example here and here we have Jacob and Aisha.

Does the final outcome impart knowledge, skill, or instruction? So let's see how well their product satisfied this design requirement.

So they've said, "Our final design outcome's primary function is to impart knowledge by learning how to brush your teeth correctly." Very important for young children.

"This is a fundamental skill for young children to learn.

It can be challenging to learn due to the lack of development in fine motor skills," which we've already talked about, "And the inability to clearly see what needs cleaning.

Motivation to do this twice daily can also be a challenge." As I've already talked about, I definitely know it can be a challenge.

"The outcome also teaches hand-eye coordination, shape and colour recognition, fine motor skills, and of course dexterity.

So again, if we go back to that question of does the final outcome impart knowledge? Well, absolutely it does.

Okay, so we've got lots of different knowledge in there, we've got lots of skills in there, and also the instruction of actually brushing your teeth.

So well done Jacob and Aisha, because it looks like your product has satisfied that question as well.

Fantastic.

So we're now onto your first task.

What I would like you to do in your collaborative design team is write an evaluation for your final design outcome.

Three bullet points to remember whilst you're doing this.

Use the design team's design specification or the design requirements to compare the final outcome against.

These would've been decided right at the beginning of what you actually wanted your product to do.

And you might have got your user to help you write those.

So it's a really important list that you can use.

Consider adapting the list into a series of questions.

This, of course, makes it easier to be able to write an evaluation when you ask yourself a question.

And finally, make sure you explain your answers fully.

We want to know why, not just a single word answer question.

So pause the video now, complete this task, come back to me when you've got some answers.

So how did you get on? Well, of course, we have already seen that we have got our design requirements here from our collaborative design team here on the Oak team.

So what we had is has it been designed for play? Intended for children to use? Does it impart knowledge, skills, or instructions? Does it include tactile interactions? Is it safe to use? Is it made from types of timbers? Manufactured collaboratively, you know, team? And, of course, for indoor or outdoor environment.

Now, yours might be very different to that, it really doesn't matter.

But as long as you've adapted that into questions, you can then use that to do your evaluation.

And here we have Sam saying, "This is the list of design requirements we wrote as a team before we even started designing.

We've adapted the list slightly to form questions so we can use it for our evaluation." So let's have a look at the next bit.

So some of your evaluations, and we've already looked at these, but of course this is the kind of detail you need to go into.

So this one, of course, talks about the dinosaur teeth puzzle.

They have to place the correct teeth pieces in the dinosaur's mouth in the correct position like a jigsaw.

And then, of course, they have to learn how to clean the dinosaur's teeth using a toy toothbrush to prevent them from falling out.

The puzzle is shaped like a dinosaur cartoon character's head, which, of course, adds to the playful element, fantastic, for the children to be able to do that.

And then, of course, we have the primary function is to impart knowledge for learning how to brush your teeth, but obviously making it a really fun and engaging toy to be able to do that.

It's a really important skill for children to use.

And it can be challenging because of children not wanting to brush their teeth, but also things like fine motor skills and the inability to see what needs to be cleaned.

So being able to use this toy motivation to this daily can be challenging, but the outcome also teaches hand-eye coordination, shape and colour recognition, and fine motor skills and dexterity.

Brilliant answer to these questions.

So we're now onto our second learning cycle.

So we've now evaluated.

So now what we need to do is decide what we would want to modify if we were gonna carry on in the iterative design process to design this product, to modify this and redesign this product.

So designers, as designers, we are always constantly seeking to improve and develop designs and products.

No product is ever perfect.

There are always constraints to how much time we have to get a product to market.

There's cost constraints and even the constraints of your team's ability to be able to design the product.

But at some point, you've got to deliver that product to market and it's not gonna be perfect.

But what's really important is that we evaluate that product and then make modifications to keep improving that product once it is in the market or once it's in the hands of the user.

Modifications are when the designer makes changes or adjustment to improve or alter a product.

That's pretty obvious.

So a quick check for understanding.

Modifications are when the designer makes what or adjustments to what or alter a product.

Fill in the blanks, pause the video and come back to me when you got your answer.

So what you should, of course, answered was modifications are when the designer makes changes or adjustments to improve or alter a product.

Well done.

So one example of designers making modifications to products are mobile phones.

Now, many changes and improvements have already been made and they are continued to be made for mobile phones.

So what I want you to do now is I want you to have a think about your mobile phones or maybe the mobile phones you've seen your parents or guardians have, and think about what changes have taken place to those products over time.

Pause the video, have a little chat or have a think about what those changes have been.

Come back to me when you've got some answers.

So here we have some examples, two examples.

We have a phone from the 1990s and also a modern smartphone.

And just from their appearance, you can see there are some drastic changes that have taken place over the years.

Number one, I can see that the smartphone doesn't have a keypad, and that's because it uses a touch screen, which has replaced the need to have separate keys for each number.

The screen on the smartphone as well is almost the same size as the phone because, of course, we wanna watch high definition films and have a big screen to be able to see all our wonderful pictures we take.

Whereas on the phone from the 1990s, it was a very small screen, only black and white, and you were very lucky you could even play Snake on it.

We could go into the surface of the cases of the phones and look at the technology.

Now, the processing power of modern smartphones is absolutely phenomenal, but we need that because they do so much.

They are a computer.

Whereas for the 1990s phone, they didn't need to do that much.

We made phone calls, sent some text messages, and like I said, maybe played one or two games on there.

You can even look at batteries.

So the phone from the 1990s didn't have that big a battery.

It just simply didn't need it.

But battery technology has revolutionised modern-day smartphones because we can do so much with them now.

Without that battery technology, it simply wouldn't be possible.

So they're just a few changes that we can see just from looking at two pictures of a phone, but that shows you that designers modify and adapt their products over time to improve them.

So I want you to pause the video again now, and I want you to think of some other examples.

So think of a product that has changed over time that has been modified or improved that you interact with.

Pause the video, come back to me when you've had got an answer, and think about those changes as well or talk to your neighbour.

Brilliant.

Did you think of any examples? I thought of one.

So I've been driving for quite a long time now.

Now my first car, it was simple, but it was effective, nice and cheap as a first car, but I could fix it probably with about five tools.

It was that simple to maintain.

The car I own now, although it's not a very expensive car, when I take that to the garage to be fixed, the mechanical engineer actually plug it into a laptop and then the laptop runs what they call a diagnostic check and tells the mechanic or the engineer what needs to be changed and what needs to be fixed.

Now, isn't that amazing? My original car, absolutely no way you could plug a computer into it.

But the modern-day cars, that is quite often how they are fixed.

And I can tell that that has been changed over time.

So that's just one example I came up with.

I'm sure you came up with loads as well.

Using a written evaluation is one way of identifying future modifications.

Another way is to collect feedback from others about the final design outcome.

Now, I'd like to have a little think here about how we could collect that feedback, but also who could we collect that feedback from because it's really important that we get feedback on our designs to be able to improve them.

So pause the video here, have a little chat with your neighbour, and think about how we could collect that feedback, but also who could we collect that feedback off? So I'm sure you had a really good discussion about who you could collect that feedback off and how you could collect that.

So let's have a little think.

Well, first of all, what this could mean is allowing others.

Now, what do I mean by others? Well, I mean any stakeholder that has an interest in your product.

So this could be another collaborative design team in your class.

It could be an end user or it could be somebody who's looking at the safety of your product or even the manufacturing processes that we've used throughout.

But what we could do is we could test the outcome.

We could get them to answer a series of questions about their experience.

They could state what could be improved about the outcome.

So they might have some really obvious facts that they want to introduce to you about the product that you have designed.

Future modifications could be represented in the following ways.

So we could have an explanation of the modifications, sketches of the modifications, CAD drawings of modifications, or you could even model a prototype with those modifications.

And again, you can even get feedback on those.

So again, I want you to pause the video here and just have a think about other ways that you could present the modifications that you want to do to your product.

So pause the video, come back to me when you've got a few answers.

Brilliant, did you think of any other ways that you could present your modifications? I thought of one.

I thought of actually we could make a video and record ourselves talking about those modifications.

That would be another way of doing it.

So let's have a look at summary.

You're gonna need this for your task.

Let's have a look at the summary of identifying and presenting future modifications that you wanna make to your product.

So for identifying modifications, we've got the written evaluation, we've got testing, we've got observations made by the user or other stakeholders, and we've even got interviews of stakeholders and users.

How how can we present those modifications? Or we could write them down and give written explanations.

We could do some sketches of what we want to modify.

We could produce some CAD drawings.

We could even model prototypes in a variety of materials to show what those modifications could be.

All of those are valid.

And, of course, you can add to that list if you want.

So quick check for understanding.

Ways of identifying modifications include, we're just thinking about how we can identify those modifications.

We've got observations, sketching, written evaluation, or modelling.

Pause the video, have a go at this.

Come back to me when you have got an answer.

So if you answered observations and written evaluation, because remember, we're identifying modifications, then you've got the answer right.

The sketching and modelling is how we can present those modifications.

We're now onto our final task about making modifications.

So in your collaborative design team, I want you to identify future modifications for your final design outcome and the whole design process, that entire process you went through when making your product.

For your team's modifications, select a way of identifying and presenting from below.

If you've really thought about some others and you really wanna do those, that's absolutely fine as well.

But our list is identifying modifications.

So we've got written evaluation, testing, observations, and interviews.

And to present those, you could of course do a written explanation.

You could produce some sketches, you could produce some CAD drawings, or even model another prototype.

Pause the video now, have a go at this task.

Come back to me when you've got your answers.

So here we have our collaborative design team, Jacob, Sam, Lucas, and Aisha.

And what could their answers be? Well, they said, "As a team, we decided to use the negative points contained within our written evaluation to help us identify possible future modifications to our final design outcome and the whole design process.

We also wanted another design team to test the product and feedback their experiences when using it." And from that, they decided they wanted to have a less complex overall shape for manufacture.

And this is because it took a long time for the team to cut and finish the edges of the puzzle components.

The teeth pieces are too small for the intended user and could be a potential health and safety hazard.

So it's really good they're thinking about the safety.

So they may want to remodel those or redesign those to be slightly bigger.

They're thinking of in future using computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing to produce the components.

And that would be really good because, of course, that would increase the rate at which they could produce the parts and also eliminate the need for lengthy finishing of edges.

And what pops into my mind is, of course, they could use laser cutting.

So computer-aided design and then laser cut some of the components.

And then finally designing and manufacturing packaging and instructions because they want to complete the whole product before it goes out to users.

So all of these are really valid modifications, and I'm sure you've got your own modifications that you would like to look at as well.

And of course, what you want to do now is you wanna go away and you probably wanna have a look at those modifications and you want to develop those into a product.

And of course, as part of the iterative design process, we can continue this to improve our product further again and again, just like all manufacturers do.

So we've now come to the end of the lesson.

So let's have a really quick summary of what we have learned today.

So evaluating designs and finished products is a core part of the design process.

Evaluations help to discover if the final design outcome has addressed the original design objectives from the beginning of the process.

And to be able to do this, we can use design specifications and requirements and they'll support in writing and evaluation.

Modifications are when the designer makes changes or adjustments to improve or alter a product.

Using a written evaluation is one way of identifying future modifications.

Presenting future modifications can include sketching, explanations, CAD designing, and modelling.

We've got lots of different ways we can do that.

Well done today.

You've been absolutely fantastic.

I hope you've enjoyed your learning, and I'll see you all again soon.