Designing for end-users and stakeholders: VCE Product Design and Technologies
“The role of the end-user and stakeholders in user-centred design, and how investigating their needs, wants, preferences and constraints drives the design brief and the product”
User-centred design means the product is shaped by a real end-user, not by the designer's taste. The end-user is the person who will use the product; stakeholders are everyone else with an interest, such as buyers, retailers, manufacturers and the community. You investigate their needs, wants, preferences, physical characteristics and constraints, then let those findings drive the brief and every later decision. You are assessed on designing for a specific person rather than a generic one.
What this dot point is asking
This dot point sits at the start of the design half of the subject. Before you can write a brief or sketch an idea, you have to know who you are designing for. Getting this right makes the rest of the folio coherent; getting it vague makes everything downstream weak.
End-user versus stakeholder
These two terms are not interchangeable, and the exam tests the difference.
- End-user. The specific person (or defined group) who will actually use the finished product. They have measurable needs, a body, a context and preferences.
- Stakeholders. Anyone else affected by or interested in the product: the person who pays for it, retailers who sell it, the people who manufacture it, regulators, and the wider community or environment that bears its impact.
User-centred design is an approach that places the end-user at the centre of every design decision, using ongoing investigation of their needs, wants, preferences and physical characteristics to shape and test the product. Stakeholders are the broader set of people and groups with an interest in the product beyond the end-user, including clients, manufacturers, retailers and the community.
Needs, wants and preferences
Investigating the end-user means separating three things that students often blur. A need is essential to the product's function (a chair must bear weight). A want is desirable but not essential (the chair folds flat for storage). A preference is about taste (the end-user likes pale timber). Strong folios label these clearly, because needs become non-negotiable constraints in the brief while wants and preferences guide refinement and selection.
The single biggest predictor of a strong folio is a specific, real end-user. A brief written for "a teenager" yields generic decisions; a brief written for a named 16-year-old with a small bedroom, a part-time job and a stated frustration yields decisions you can justify and test. Name the person, record their actual words, and measure their context.
How investigation drives the design
The point of investigating the end-user is not to fill folio pages; it is to generate the constraints and considerations that the brief will list and the evaluation criteria will test. Anthropometric data (the end-user's measurements) sets dimensions. Their environment sets size, weight and material limits. Their stated frustrations define the problem. Their preferences guide aesthetics. Every later decision should be traceable back to a finding about the end-user or a stakeholder requirement.
A student designs a bedside storage unit for a named end-user, a 17-year-old in a shared, cramped bedroom. Investigation: an interview reveals the need to keep a phone, water bottle, medication and a book within reach in the dark; the want for it to not wake a sleeping sibling; and a preference for a calm, pale finish. Measuring the room shows a 280 mm gap between bed and wall. Stakeholders: the parent who funds it wants it under a set budget; the household values low-toxicity finishes. These findings convert directly into brief constraints (maximum 270 mm wide, soft-close to avoid noise, budget cap, low-VOC finish) and into evaluation criteria phrased as testable questions. The whole folio now traces back to a real person. That traceability is what the outcome rewards.
Investigation methods and ethics
You gather end-user information through interviews, surveys, observation and measurement, combining qualitative insight (what they say and feel) with quantitative data (dimensions, frequencies). When you involve real people you respect their privacy, seek consent and represent their views honestly. Treating the end-user as a genuine collaborator, not a prop, produces better evidence and better products.
A frequent mistake is inventing an end-user to fit a product the student already wants to make, then writing the investigation backwards. Assessors can see this: the findings are vague, the measurements are absent, and nothing downstream is justified by them. The reverse mistake is designing for yourself and pretending it is for someone else. Pick a real person, investigate them genuinely, and let the evidence lead the design rather than the other way around.
When you can distinguish the end-user from stakeholders, separate needs from wants and preferences, and show that every brief constraint traces to a genuine finding about a specific person, you have met this dot point and given the whole School-Assessed Task a defensible foundation.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of VCAA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
2025 VCAA-style5 marksA home office chair was evaluated in a user trial. A design can be improved or enhanced in response to feedback from end users. Based on the information provided, identify two areas in which the design of the home office chair could be improved or enhanced, and justify one of the areas identified using the results from Graph 1 and Graph 2.Show worked answer →
This combines parts a and b of a 5 mark question: 2 marks for identifying two improvement areas, 3 marks for justifying one using the graph data.
Identify two areas (2 marks, 1 each). Choose features the end users rated less favourably or were unlikely to select, for example the fabric (rated lower than style in Graph 2) and the style or visual appeal that 25 of 50 participants were unlikely to select in Graph 1. Other defensible areas include comfort, adjustability or aesthetic fit with a home office.
Justify one area using the data (3 marks). Pick one area and tie it to the figures. For example: the fabric should be improved because Graph 2 shows it was rated lower overall than style, and Graph 1 shows 25 of 50 participants were unlikely to select the chair on its current visual features. Improving the fabric directly targets the weakest-rated feature, so it should lift end-user satisfaction and the likelihood of selection.
Full marks require the justification to quote or reference the actual results, not just assert that the change would help.
2025 VCAA-style3 marksThe factors that influence product design are also used to evaluate a product. One of those factors is end users. Add a total of three annotations to the visualisations to highlight features of the chairs that are relevant to the end user.Show worked answer →
Three marks, one for each annotation that genuinely links a visible feature of the chair to an end-user need. In a written response, describe the three annotations you would add.
Each annotation should name a feature and explain its relevance to the end user, for example:
- Adjustable seat height so the chair suits end users of different statures working from home.
- Lumbar or back support to keep a home worker comfortable and reduce strain over long periods.
- Breathable fabric or armrests improving comfort and usability for the daily home-office user.
Markers reward annotations that connect form to the end user (comfort, ergonomics, adjustability, accessibility), not generic labels such as the colour or material with no user link.