CHOOSING AN IA FOCUS

Trying to find a focus for your Internal Assessment can be difficult. Whatever you choose to needs to include opportunities for authentic research, testing, exploration and development. Below, are a number of ways in which you might look to find a focus for your IA.

PERSONAL INTERESTS

Looking inwards and at your own interests and hobbies, is there something that you do and/or use that you feel could be improved or is missing? Exploring personal interests has the added advantage of you already knowing the product type and will likely have access to users for testing and research purposes.

An example of this could be developing or redesigning a piece of sporting equipment to make it lighter, faster, more portable or easier to use.

A badminton racket grip redesigned to reduce weight whilst maintaining strength

2. REACH / GRIP / LIFT

There are hundreds of daily tasks that able-bodied people take for granted everyday. Considering being less physically abled or (even better) interviewing somebody that suffers with a physical disability can open up many opportunities to help make daily tasks and products easier to do/use.

Imagine for a second that you have arthritis in your hands and therefore can't easily form a grip to grab door handles, open jars or cook. How could design be used to enable and empower people in this situation?

Projects like this offer lots of scope for model making, testing and design iteration - all key to successful IA's.

There are direct links to topics 1, 3 and 7 in projects based around these needs/problems and it is encouraged to use and reference learning in this area throughout the project.

Quick modelling activity to assess grip types

3. MODULAR AND/OR MULTIFUNCTIONAL

We surround ourselves with often expensive products that serve only one purpose. We are also increasingly living in smaller spaces. With this in mind, there could be more demand for products that are modular and/or multifunctional that save money and space.

When looking into this area of opportunity, it is important to determine whether there is an actual need for the product type that you have in mind. Not all functions work well together.

4. PORTABILITY / FLAT-PACK

As mentioned above, we are increasingly living in smaller spaces and with that, comes lack of storage. Additionally, the financial and environmental costs of shipping products around the world are huge.

Designing products that can be sold and shipped flat packed and easily assembled by the user is an excellent way of working towards solving the problems mentioned above. You look to create a new product type or take an existing product type and attempt to create a flat pack version.

Not every product type is suitable for flat pack design and so it is up to you as the designer to determine the need and suitability of the product type that you choose.

5. THE WORK OF OTHERS

There are a lot of great websites such as YANKO Design that celebrate high quality designs from a vast number of designers. Often, looking through these can spark an idea of your own. It is important not to simply copy an existing idea but to use resources such as these as inspiration, recognising creative thought patterns and approaches to problem solving.

Other useful and inspirational websites include:

6. CANVASSING/SURVEYING THE NEEDS OF OTHERS

Surveying others to ask whether they have a personal need/problem for you to solve can be a great way of finding an IA focus and you will have a direct client to use when making design decisions and testing.

Consider creating a digital survey with direct questions that could help to build your specification. For example, what is the need, what do they thing the solution might look like, what could it be made from, how much would they be willing to pay for said solution, etc.

Tip: Send the survey to a variety of people with varied age, gender and profession

7. UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

The 17 different United Nations SDG's are a way in which you could explore problems related to a particular goal. Projects that use this as a starting point can often turn out to be innovative and creative as the goals can be explored and interpreted in a number of ways. For example, how can a product help to promote gender equality (5) and what might that look like? Approaching the UN SDGs with an open mind could lead to a very interesting project if explored creatively.

An example project using this as a starting method is using SDG 7 'affordable and clean energy' whereby the student designed and made a portable solar energy charger.

8. EXEMPLAR PROJECTS

Finally, it is often useful to look through previously completed student projects to see what others have done in the past, the types of projects that they chose and how they approached them. It is important not to replicate what you see but to take inspiration from both the good and the bad. With this in mind, you can view some previously completed projects (at varied levels) here.