Iterative design
Design & Technology · GCSE · The School
Explore, create, evaluate
GCSE D&T is assessed on an ITERATIVE process: explore the context and users, create something, evaluate it, and go round again — repeatedly. It is deliberately not design-then-make-then-write-up; the specification rewards the loop, and a portfolio that shows one straight line through the work loses marks even if the outcome is good.
Prototypes answer questions
A prototype is not a small finished product; it is a question made physical. 'Is this handle comfortable?' needs only a handle in card and tape. Build the cheapest thing that answers the question, get it in front of a user, and record what you learned. Cardboard on day two is worth more than perfect CAD on day thirty.
Evidencing iteration
Photograph every version including the bad ones. Date them. Write what you asked, what happened and what changed as a result. Examiners are looking for decisions driven by evidence — 'the user could not grip it, so the handle grew from 20mm to 32mm' is exactly the sentence that scores.
PROTOTYPE 1, card, twenty minutes: does the handle fall where the hand naturally sits? Answer: too low. PROTOTYPE 2, card with the handle moved: comfortable, but the lid fouls the handle. PROTOTYPE 3, foam board with the lid hinged at the back: works. Each version answered ONE question and changed because of the answer. Three rough models beat one beautiful one that tested nothing.
Iteration is not indecision
There is a version of this that loses marks: changing the design every week because you keep having new ideas. That is not iteration, it is drift, and a portfolio full of unrelated concepts reads as someone who never committed. Real iteration keeps the same problem and improves the answer to it. Each version should be traceable to the one before through a reason. If you cannot write 'I changed X because the test showed Y', the change was taste, not evidence, and taste does not score.
When to stop
Iteration has to end so manufacture can start, and knowing when is part of the skill. Stop when the remaining questions are ones a prototype cannot answer any better than the real thing will — final finish, exact colour, whether the user still likes it after a month. Do not stop while a structural question is open, because discovering that the joint fails during final manufacture costs you the outcome. Rule of thumb: every question that would change the DIMENSIONS or the STRUCTURE gets answered in card first.