B2.1 — The design process

Key concepts

The IB DT course uses a five-stage design thinking model adapted from industry practice. The stages are not a recipe — they are a rhythm designers return to repeatedly throughout a project. Understanding the process is essential because the Internal Assessment is structured around it.

The five stages

1. Empathize — understand the user through research. Interviews, observation, surveys, secondary research. Goal: deeply understand who the user is, what they need, and the context in which they operate.

2. Define — synthesise research into a problem statement. Articulate the user need. Write a specification of measurable requirements. A good problem statement is specific: "Left-handed students in my school struggle to take lecture notes in shared lecture theatres with right-handed flip-desks."

3. Ideate — generate many solutions. Sketching, brainstorming, SCAMPER, morphological analysis. Goal: diverge widely before converging. The best idea is rarely the first idea.

4. Prototype — build to learn. Low- and high-fidelity prototypes at increasing resolution. Each prototype answers a specific question.

5. Test — evaluate with users. Usability testing, measurement against specification. Use results to refine the design — often looping back to earlier stages.

Linear vs iterative

A linear process moves through stages once, in order. Simple to manage, but assumes you can predict the right solution without feedback.

An iterative process loops back — testing uncovers problems that send you back to research, ideation, or prototyping. Iteration is how design accommodates reality.

Strong design work visibly cycles. A student who shows research on page 1 and a prototype on page 20 with nothing connecting them has not iterated. A student who shows three prototypes, each with documented testing and redesign decisions driven by the previous test, has iterated.

The process is ongoing research

Research does not stop when ideation begins. Every prototype is an experiment; every user test is more research. Treating research as a single early phase misses the point. New questions emerge at every stage, and each requires fresh evidence.

Connecting process to the IA

The course maps the design process directly onto the IA criteria:

Each criterion expects evidence of that stage being done well — and each expects evidence of iteration within that stage.

Communicating a design for manufacture

A design only becomes a product when someone else can build it from your documentation. The final stage of the process is therefore a communication problem: the physical detail of the product has to be recorded precisely enough that a manufacturer, working without you in the room, produces the part you intended.

That means detailed drawings of components and of the assembled product, carrying three things:

• Dimensions — every measurement needed to make the part, with tolerances where fit matters. A dimension omitted is a dimension the manufacturer will choose for you.
• Scale — stated explicitly (1:1, 1:2, 2:1). A drawing without a declared scale cannot be measured from safely.
• Assembly details — how the parts go together: exploded views, fastener types and positions, orientation, and the order of assembly.

Conventions exist so drawings read the same way everywhere: orthographic projection (front, plan and end elevations of the same object, aligned), sectional views to expose internal features, and exploded isometric views for assembly. CAD produces these directly, but the discipline is the same by hand.

For the IA, this is the difference between a folio that documents a concept and one that documents a product. If a reader could not manufacture your design from your drawings, the detail is not yet sufficient.

Reflection and documentation

The IA is not assessed on the final product — it is assessed on evidence of process. Design journals, annotated sketches, test records, dated iterations, and reflective commentary are what examiners read.

A beautiful product with no documentation scores poorly. A modest product with rich documented reasoning scores well.

Common traps

• Jumping to solutions — deciding the answer before research.
• Single-prototype projects — one iteration is not iteration.
• Decorative research — research that sits in the report but does not shape decisions.
• Undocumented iteration — changes with no explanation of what was learned.

Case studies

Dyson cyclonic vacuum — 5,127 prototypes spanning 15 years. A radical example of iteration: each prototype varied one parameter, tested in isolation. No single insight produced the final product — it emerged from relentless cycling through the stages.

Stanford d.school shopping bag project — design students redesign shopping bags with users in the checkout line. Forces compressed iteration — multiple prototypes tested with real users in a single day. Illustrates that process stages can move fast when disciplined.

IDEO's method cards — tools explicitly aligned to process stages, used to prompt teams into the right activity at the right stage. Acknowledges that designers must pick the right tool for the stage they are in.

Post-it Note (3M) — originated in an unintended prototype (a weak adhesive from a failed strong-glue project). Illustrates that prototyping can reveal opportunities that empathizing did not — the process is genuinely non-linear.

Glossary

• Orthographic projection — a drawing convention showing aligned front, plan and end views of an object.
• Exploded view — a drawing separating components along their assembly axes to show how they fit together.
• Scale — the declared ratio between drawing size and real size, e.g. 1:2.
• Design process — a structured approach to moving from a design opportunity to a tested solution.
• Empathize — the stage of understanding users through research.
• Define — the stage of synthesising research into a problem statement and specification.
• Ideate — the stage of generating multiple potential solutions.
• Prototype — the stage of building testable versions of ideas.
• Test — the stage of evaluating prototypes with users.
• Iteration — a cycle of building, testing, learning, and refining.
• Design journal — ongoing documentation of decisions, sketches, tests, and reflection.

Check your understanding

1. Name the five stages of the design process and summarise the purpose of each.

Empathize — understand the user through research. Define — synthesise findings into a problem statement and specification. Ideate — generate many possible solutions. Prototype — build testable versions at increasing fidelity. Test — evaluate solutions against specification with real users. Each stage produces evidence that informs the next, but any stage may trigger a return to an earlier one.

2. Explain why the design process is iterative rather than linear, with a specific example.

Discoveries at one stage often reveal that earlier work was incomplete or wrong. For example, a prototyping test may show that users hold a tool differently than observed in early research, meaning the specification must be updated and new ideas explored. A linear process would ignore this signal; an iterative process returns to empathy or definition, updates the work, and proceeds. Iteration is how the process corrects its own mistakes.

3. Map the five stages of the design process onto the five IA criteria and explain the correspondence.

Empathize → Criterion A (analysing the design opportunity) — both require research into users and context. Define → Criterion B (design specifications) — both convert research into testable requirements. Ideate and early prototype → Criterion C (developing ideas) — both involve generating and narrowing concepts. Final prototype → Criterion D (presenting the solution) — both communicate the chosen design. Test and reflect → Criterion E (evaluation) — both compare the outcome to the specification and user needs.

4. A student's IA shows research on page 1 and a fully resolved prototype on page 20, with no evidence of the stages in between. Why will this score poorly?

The IA is assessed on evidence of process, not on the quality of the final product. Without documented ideation, prototyping, and testing, there is no evidence of iteration, user involvement, or specification-driven refinement. Criterion C (developing ideas) and E (evaluation) depend on visible iteration. A single-page-to-final-product leap asks the examiner to take the process on faith, which is not what the criteria reward.

Teacher's notes — additional examples and activities

Primary vs secondary research — classification exercise

Give students a set of research strategy cards and ask them to place each into a Venn diagram: primary, secondary, or both.

• Primary: interviews, surveys, focus groups, material testing, product analysis
• Secondary: government data, academic research, literature review, statistics, internet-based research
• Both/either: depending on how the source is used

Then apply a quantitative/qualitative key to each card.

ACCESS FM framework

A widely-used product analysis mnemonic:

• Aesthetics
• Cost
• Customer
• Environment
• Size
• Safety
• Function
• Materials

Use ACCESS FM to structure analysis of existing products, to scaffold specifications, and to check completeness of design criteria.

SCAMPER ideation

When students get stuck, SCAMPER unlocks new directions:

• Substitute — swap one part for another
• Combine — merge the product with something else
• Adapt — imagine the product in a different place
• Modify — scale bigger or smaller
• Put to another use — different function
• Eliminate — take a part away
• Reverse — upside down or inside out

Other ideation techniques

• Crazy 8's — fold a sheet into 8 rectangles; produce 8 ideas in 8 minutes. Forces quantity over quality.
• Anthropomorphism — what if your product could talk, feel, sleep? (Amazon Alexa reportedly started as a student asking what if a speaker could talk?)
• Mindmapping — branching associations from a central concept

Problem statement

A problem statement is one concise sentence capturing the purpose of the project. It must identify the user, context, and need clearly. Example: "Left-handed students in my school struggle to take notes in lecture theatres with right-handed flip desks."

Use the problem statement as a filter: every idea is tested against it — does this solve the stated problem?

Ideation task

Using SCAMPER, produce at least 6 sketches of the product being redesigned. Each sketch annotated in ≤10 words explaining inspiration and limitations. SOAR framework applied (Sketch, Outline, Annotate, Render).

Extension: Repeat the exercise for a peer's problem statement.

Quantity over quality (in ideation)

Early ideation prioritises quantity — the 20th idea is rarely the 20th-best, but often the most original because it forces past obvious solutions. Quality judgement comes later, when narrowing down.