Year 9 DT Enrichment on ABC Design Skills

The DT department were delighted to invite Mr Russell Beard into school on Tuesday to deliver a session on ABC design to some of our Year 9 pupils.

Mr Beard is a professional Product Designer who supports University students on a range of design related courses. Mr Beard also delivers a fortnightly specialist design skill sessions to our Sixth Form Product Design students and it is upon this which Tuesdays enrichment session was based. 

After a brief introduction and discussion about designing and the need for designers to communicate and empathise with the users of their products, the pupils readied themselves for designing by completing a range of sketching warm ups. Pupils learned about ‘Ghost Lines’ and not being afraid to make mistakes. Drawing in permanent pen encouraged pupils to embrace errors, not to worry about erasing lines and to be brave and bold with their sketching. 

Once warmed up, pupils were tasked with designing a vase for different potential users, using lessons learned in the warm up skills to build sketches using ellipses and to think creatively about final solutions by empathising with potential users. It was great to see pupils exploring different designs and creating very unique ideas. 

To finish the session Mr Beard challenged the pupils to challenge their designing skills by considering ABC design. This is where we rethink the way in which a product might be designed so that more unique and interesting solutions can be developed. Mr Beard provided the example of a coffee maker where we might consider whether the usual process of passing hot water through coffee granules into a collection vessel could be reconsidered and reorganised. The pupils had to design their own early concept coffee machines and present their ideas to the group at the end of the session. 

It was excellent to see some of our potential designers of the future engaged so thoroughly in the session and Mr Beard was very complimentary about the pupils and their creativity. We hope that the pupils will be able to benefit from more sessions like this in the future, starting with our current Year 10 iGCSE pupils on Tuesday 15th February.