Investigation notes

Some points to consider during your investigation

Identify the problem

The challenge:

Use technology to create a solution to a problem that is meaningful to yourself and that relates to life, society and/or the environment.

You need to develop a relevant design problem based on this challenge. It needs explaining / critically investigating

You should discuss possible problems at the beginning of you report while developing guiding questions to drive research. Think about the different ways of tackling the challenge. You need to be able to assess the impact of your design on life, society and or the environment at the end of the project, therefore, you need to come up with a message and focus for your product. What do you want to say / achieve with your design?

Be realistic, but try to make a difference. IT MUST BE RELATED TO AN AOI. What follows is a guide or possible way to tackle the challenge. You can follow these tasks or develop your own method. Remember the MYP objectives here and check the rubric here.

Good Luck.

formulate and discuss appropriate questions that will guide your investigation

  • Choose ONE Area of interaction to act as the focus for your project see here for help
  • Include some/one of the guiding questions relating to your chosen AoI see here for help. These should be the main focus for your project.
  • You now need to develop a relevant design problem based on this AoI.
  • Develop a clear idea of who your problem effects and how is this problem is relevant to life, society or the environment.
  • How reliable is the information?

Write a clear design brief.

Write a clear design brief:

The design brief is your response to the challenge, showing how you intend to solve the problem you have been presented with. To write a design brief create a summary of the Problem and the appropriate Response as ONE short paragraph.

Use the notes here to help you.

A good problem should be:

  • Something of interest to you
  • Something that you can REALISTICALLY try to solve in the time
  • Something that you have most of the required skills to solve - Is this a good time to learn some new software?
  • Something relevant to your intended audience
  • Something you have the resources to solve

Developing the Design Brief / Critically investigate the problem

Write a list of guiding questions that will help you during the rest of your investigation - You need to answer them during your investigation.

e.g. Who will my client be? What does the client want? Where can I find suitable information? When are the deadlines? Why is this problem relevant? How should I present my solution?

Look at existing solutions:

What are the possible ways to try to solve the problem? Poster, video, web site, wooden product, plastic product, food item, small organic garden?

  • Collect examples of existing solutions to similar problems.
  • Evaluate them. - What are the good or bad points of each?
  • Justify your choices - What part(s) of their design could you adapt in your design? - colours, content. layout, type of product etc.

Explore software/hardware that could help you solve your design problem


    Make sure you have a wide range of resources (at least 4 types - internet, books, magazines, interviews with your peers, teacher etc)

Formulate a design specification

Develop a Design Specification.

See here for help

How will you test your designs? At least 3 tests

  1. Explain exactly how you will test your designs against the most important criteria of your design specification.
  2. How will you choose your final design?
  3. Explain how you will test your final, completed product during the evaluation stages.

"For a student to achieve the higher descriptor of this criterion (5-6), he/she has to describe a minimum of 3 detailed tests such as conducting a survey to potential users (a sample questionnaire could be provided), observation and recording of actual product testing by the intended users and evaluating the product against the list of the design specification and using it as a checklist to determine the success of the product." IBO, 2006

Evaluation of the Investigation Stage

Evaluate your progress so far, include:

    • The Process - (Approaches to learning)
      • research skills (information literacy)
      • organization skills.
      • Attitude to work (this unit)
      • suggest improvements.
    • The content of your work -
      • what level do you think you have achieved in this section? Explain your answer.
      • suggest ways to improve in the future.
    • Also check out the approaches to learning questions and answer any that may be relevant.