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EXPLORE

2

DESIGN BRIEF

This is a very important part of your NEA that clarifies what your aim is, what problem you will solve and where you have identified a primary user and other stakeholders that will be key players throughout the rest of the process. Most students can deliver this on one page and it's very useful to do this as it really helps those reading your work to be clear on your Design Brief and direction of the project. To quote OCR this section (1.2) should show: 

 

'The candidate's understanding and interpretation of the context

The relevance, focus and direction of the project

The clarity and detail of the problems and issues for attention

The scope for challenge involved

Identification of primary users and other stakeholders' 

https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/531798-internal-marking-guidance.pdf

Defining & writing a 'Design Brief'

The first stage in this process is defining what your Design Brief should be. Writing one is actually quite difficult and there is a balance between being specific enough to allow direction but not so specific that it restricts your creativity. Please watch the video below and follow the steps outlined to help you define yours. All of the work you carry out to define it should go into your slides. When you have decided on your final Design Brief please make is clear and bold on your slides so that the person reading it can find it - you could argue it is the most important sentence within your NEA.

Primary User & Stakeholders

The next important information to include on this page is who your Primary User will be. This person should be someone within your target market and someone that you are able to communicate with frequently so that you can interview them and get feedback from them throughout the design process. It is important that this person is a 'real user' and someone who experiences the problem you are trying to solve. Ideally, it will not be a close family member, they will be too kind and may not necessarily give you honest and constructive feedback.

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The video below helps to explain the role of the primary user and the stakeholders within the design process.

Once you have selected your primary user to need to include some details about them along with a photo. Details you might like to include:

- Name

- Age (if relevant)

- Why you have chosen them?

- Why they are a good choice for the chosen design brief (this could be particular hobbies, interests, career etc)?

- Any other details it would be worth mentioning / relevant / helpful

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You will also need to consider and include a list of other stakeholders, this will enable you to keep the variety of people that you need to consider at the front of your mind throughout the design process. 

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These could be for example...

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  • Charities that may be interested in your product

  • Groups of people with similar interests or commonalities (such as a disability)

  • Organisations that have relevance to the context or particular challenge you have chosen

  • Businesses that may be interested in selling or investing in your product

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Challenge and potential

How do you prove that the design brief has challenge, potential and commercial viability? During your initial research, you will have considered these aspects but it is important to highlight this on this page too:

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CHALLENGE ?

During the 'writing the Design Brief' process you were purposefully going through a series of steps that allowed your to consider and reflect to ensure you were considering the level of challenge and hopefully that it had potential.

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POTENTIAL ?

How can you consider whether your brief has potential beyond your own ideas? You might like to check in with your primary user or stakeholder to check they agree with you.

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Image by Brooke Cagle

COMMERCIAL VIABILITY ?

You want to show that you have considered that your design brief takes you in a direction that has commercial viability, to do this you have to prove that there would be demand for a product like yours. To do this you could:

1) show that other similar products are currently 'on the market' and that they sell 

2) ask your user or stakeholders if they would buy a product that solves your brief

3) find any online research that proves that it is a growing market

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Exemplars
Checklist & Markscheme
  • Is there a defined design brief and does this offer scope for challenge? have the challenges been identified?

  • Has a primary user been confirmed? are there details and a photo?

  • Have stakeholders been identified?

  • The design brief has been checked with stakeholders to check it is feasible and has potential

  • All photos are referenced

  • Commercial viability has been explored

Investigations of context mark scheme.pn
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