National Year 13 Design and Technology: Product Design

Chapters: 2

1. 3.2 Designing and making principles

3.2.1 Design methods and processes · 3.2.2 Design theory · 3.2.3 Technology and cultural change · 3.2.4 Design processes · 3.2.5 Critical analysis and evaluation · 3.2.6 Selecting appropriate tools, equipment and processes · 3.2.7 Accuracy in design and manufacture · 3.2.8 Responsible design · 3.2.9 Design for manufacture and project management · 3.2.10 National and international standards

The Design Process: From Problem to Product – The design process is a loop of steps designers use to solve a real problem for real people: investigate the need, define it in a brief and a measurable specification, generate many ideas, build a prototype, then test and evaluate it against the specification. Whatever fails sends you back round the loop. This repeating is called iteration, and it is how almost every product, app, building and artwork is improved.
Design History: How Movements and Designers Shaped Everyday Things – Designs change over time because of new materials, new technology and new ideas about people and society. Arts and Crafts rejected cheap factory goods and valued hand-made work. Art Nouveau used flowing curves from nature. Bauhaus and Modernism said form follows function and designed for mass production. Mid-century designers used moulded plywood and plastic for affordable furniture. Postmodernism and Memphis broke the rules with colour and fun. Today's designers focus on sustainability and digital making. Studying the work of others helps us analyse, get inspired and design better.
Product Life Cycle: Stages, Extension Strategies and the Boston Matrix – The product life cycle shows how a product's sales change over time, through five stages: development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Cash flow is negative during development and introduction, turns positive in growth and is highest in maturity. Firms use extension strategies (new features, new markets, new packaging, lower price, more promotion) to delay decline. A business manages many products together as a portfolio; the Boston Matrix sorts them into stars, cash cows, question marks and dogs. Good product design balances function, look (aesthetics) and cost (the design mix), and keeps improving as technology and culture change.
Product Analysis: Taking a Product Apart to Judge It – Product analysis means studying an existing product to understand who it is for, how it works, what it is made of, how it was made and how well it meets its users' needs. Designers use questions such as ACCESS FM, take the product apart (disassembly), test it, and then evaluate it against clear criteria to suggest improvements.
Production Methods – Firms choose how to make things by how many they need. One-off (job) production makes a single item to order; batch production makes a set of identical items, then switches; mass (flow) production makes huge numbers on a line; continuous production runs non-stop. Lean production and just-in-time cut waste and stock. Quality control checks products against a target size with a tolerance (for example 50 ± 0.5 mm), and quality assurance builds quality into every stage.
Quality Control, Tolerances and Accuracy in Manufacture – No process makes parts exactly the same size every time, so designers give a target size and a tolerance (the allowed variation), written like 50.0 ± 0.2 mm. Parts inside the tolerance pass; parts outside are rejected or reworked. Quality control (QC) inspects and tests products to find faults. Quality assurance (QA) is the whole system that prevents faults, with standards, training and checks at every stage. Total quality management (TQM) makes quality everyone's job. Accuracy rises with jigs, fixtures, templates and CNC machines, and is checked with rules, calipers, micrometers and go/no-go gauges, often on a sample of the batch.
Sustainable Design: Products That Are Kind to People and Planet – Sustainable design means making products that meet our needs while harming nature and people as little as possible. Every product has a life cycle: materials, making, transport, use and end of life. A life cycle assessment adds up the ecological footprint (energy, CO₂, water, waste) at each stage. The social footprint is the effect on workers and communities: pay, safety, child labour, fair trade. Designers use the six Rs (rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle), design for maintenance, repair and disassembly, and avoid planned obsolescence. Ecodesign also weighs the economic side: a product must be affordable and profitable, so the best designs balance environment, society and economy.
Project Management – A project is a one-time piece of work with a clear goal, a start and an end. Project management means planning and controlling it so it meets its scope on time and within cost. The life cycle runs initiate, plan, execute, monitor and close. Planners break the work into tasks (WBS), place them on a Gantt chart, find the critical path, manage risks and review lessons learned at the end.
National and International Standards in Design – A standard is an agreed document that sets sizes, quality, safety or test methods so products fit, work safely and can be traded. ISO and IEC write world standards; regional (EN) and national bodies such as BIS, BSI, DIN, UNE and ANSI adopt them. Marks like CE, ISI and the Kitemark show conformity. ISO 216 A-series paper starts at A0 = 1 m², halves at each size and keeps a 1 : √2 ratio. Drawing standards fix line types, scales, dimensions, title blocks and how to fold sheets to A4.

2. Non-exam assessment

Design-and-make project

The Design Process: From Problem to Product – The design process is a loop of steps designers use to solve a real problem for real people: investigate the need, define it in a brief and a measurable specification, generate many ideas, build a prototype, then test and evaluate it against the specification. Whatever fails sends you back round the loop. This repeating is called iteration, and it is how almost every product, app, building and artwork is improved.