Investigation, Primary And Secondary Data

Ask a student what their product must do and you will usually get four words: it must be strong. Ask an examiner what that is worth and the answer is nothing at all, because the specimen mark scheme prints it as one of four typical zero mark responses. Strong compared with what? Strong enough to survive what? Tested how? A requirement that cannot be measured cannot be met and cannot be failed, which means it is not a requirement.

This lesson is about turning what people need into something a designer can build against. You will learn how market research, interviews and human factors including ergonomics are used and applied; how focus groups, and product analysis and evaluation, produce information nothing else will; and how anthropometric data and percentiles decide real dimensions. You will carry out investigations in order to identify problems and needs, learn why a designer considers alterations to a brief and modifying the brief as required, and then write the three documents this course rests on: a design brief, a quantifiable and testable design specification, and a clear manufacturing specification. This is designing and making principles content, examined in Section C of Paper 1, where it supplied eleven marks on the specimen paper.