Design syllabus, dot point by dot point

Writing a design brief and design criteria - the purpose and components of a design brief that describes a human-centred design problem, how needs are converted into specific, measurable design criteria, and how those criteria steer the develop phase and become the standard for evaluation

Designing with empathy and human-centred design - understanding the needs and wants of an identified person or group, building empathy as the foundation of the design response, and the difference between latent, expressed and observed needs

Drawing and visualisation techniques - freehand ideation sketching, thumbnails, annotated drawings, pictorial views (isometric and perspective), orthographic and technical drawing, and rendering, what each technique is for, and how visualisation supports thinking in develop and communication in resolve

Empathy research methods - interview, observation and immersion or experiences as the three core ways to gather empathy data, what each method reveals and conceals, how to run them well, and how their findings combine to expose expressed and latent needs in the explore phase

High-fidelity prototyping in the resolve phase - what a high-fidelity prototype is and how it differs from low-fidelity work, the materials and techniques used to make a realistic representation, how it supports detailed refinement and final user testing, and when raising fidelity is justified

IA1 design challenge - the format, conditions and weighting of the first internal assessment, what each phase of the design process must demonstrate within the challenge, how it is judged, and the strategy for showing the full explore-develop-resolve loop under controlled conditions

IA2 project - the format, weighting and requirements of the second internal assessment, how it applies designing with empathy across the explore and develop phases, what a strong design folio evidences, and how every resolved feature must trace back to an identified user need

Ideation and design strategies used in the develop phase - divergent strategies for generating ideas (brainstorming, SCAMPER, mind-mapping, morphological analysis) and convergent strategies for selecting ideas (criteria matrices, dot voting, PMI), and how breadth then convergence produces innovative responses

Low-fidelity prototyping in the develop phase - what a low-fidelity prototype is, the materials and techniques used (paper, card, mock-ups, role-play, storyboards), why fast and rough is the point, how user testing of low-fidelity prototypes produces evidence, and how that evidence drives iteration

Identifying and analysing needs, wants and opportunities - the difference between an expressed want, an underlying need and a latent opportunity, how empathy data is gathered and analysed to surface them, and how this analysis frames the human-centred design problem in the explore phase

Synthesising empathy data into personas and empathy maps - what a persona and an empathy map are, how they are built from interview, observation and immersion data, what each captures (says, thinks, does, feels), and how they keep the identified user present through develop and resolve

The design fields and design professions - the breadth of design practice across fields such as product or industrial design, environmental or spatial design, and communication or visual design, what each field designs and the conventions it works within, and how identifying the relevant field shapes a response

The design process as an iterative, non-linear cycle of explore, develop and resolve - what each phase contributes, the design strategies and methods used in each, and how empathy data drives the movement between phases

Visualisation and the communication of design proposals - the role of sketches, annotated drawings, models and prototypes in developing ideas, and the use of presentation visualisations, design language and justification to communicate and pitch a resolved proposal

Circular design and life-cycle thinking - the shift from a linear take-make-dispose model to a circular model that designs out waste, keeps materials in use and regenerates systems, and the use of life-cycle assessment to evaluate impact across all stages

Evaluating and justifying a sustainable design - assessing a resolved design against the user, sustainability and circular criteria, using evidence from testing and life-cycle analysis, and communicating a justified design proposal that defends the trade-offs made

External assessment examination - the format, conditions and weighting of the QCAA-set examination, the extended-response items on unseen stimulus, the design-thinking skills it tests (analysis, evaluation, justification of decisions and trade-offs), and how to prepare for it

IA3 project - the format, weighting and requirements of the third internal assessment, how it applies a redesigning and circular approach in Unit 4, what a strong folio evidences from life-cycle critique to justified redesign, and how the sustainability improvement is demonstrated

The redesigning approach to design opportunities - critiquing an existing design to identify its sustainability shortcomings, framing a redesign opportunity, and applying the explore, develop and resolve process to deliver a more sustainable response

The principles of sustainable design - the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental sustainability, designing for products that can be supported indefinitely, and how sustainability reframes the needs and criteria a designer responds to