IB MYP Design: The Four Assessment Criteria in Practice -- Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, modelling the kind of evidence-evaluation judgment MYP Design’s ePortfolio moderation actually requires. They are not reproduced IB material – the IB holds copyright in its own subject guides and exemplars. Use these alongside official exemplars available through your school.

Related: Criteria in Practice study guide and revision notes.

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Section A

1. Name the four assessment criteria and the design-cycle stage each one maps onto. [8]

2. State the two things top-band Criterion C evidence must record, beyond the finished prototype itself. [2]

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Section B

3. A student’s Criterion A submission for “design a solution to reduce plastic use in the school cafeteria” begins: “Plastic is bad for the environment, so I designed a reusable container system.” No survey, observation or research into the actual cafeteria is included.

(a) Identify what is missing from this submission relative to top-band Criterion A evidence. [3] (b) Describe what the student would need to add to move this submission toward top-band evidence. [3]

4. A student’s Criterion B submission presents one design idea, explains how it was built, and states “this was the best option.” No alternative ideas or specification are shown.

(a) Explain why this submission cannot achieve a top mark, regardless of how good the single idea is. [3] (b) Describe what evidence would need to be added. [3]

5. A student’s Criterion D submission concludes: “The prototype worked really well and everyone liked it.”

(a) Explain why this conclusion, on its own, is insufficient top-band evidence. [3] (b) Rewrite it in outline to reflect what top-band Criterion D evidence would actually include. [3]

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Section C

6. A student’s portfolio contains a beautifully made, clearly functional final prototype, several high-quality photographs, and almost no written documentation of the process that led to it. Explain, criterion by criterion, why this portfolio is likely to score poorly despite the strong final product, and what specifically would need to be added for each criterion. [8]

7. Explain why a project can move through all four design-cycle stages in sequence and still fail to produce top-band evidence for the corresponding criteria. [4]

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Worked answers

1. Criterion A: Inquiring and analysing – the problem stage. Criterion B: Developing ideas – the specification stage. Criterion C: Creating the solution – the build stage. Criterion D: Evaluating – the test stage. (2 marks per correctly paired criterion and stage.) [8]

2. The sequence followed to build the prototype, and any changes made to the original plan along the way, with the reasoning behind each change. [2]

3. (a) Missing is any genuine analysis of the need for a solution grounded in evidence about the actual target audience – there is no survey, observation of cafeteria practices, or research into existing plastic-reduction solutions; the submission jumps straight from a general claim (“plastic is bad”) to a design brief without establishing why or how much plastic use is actually a problem at this specific cafeteria. [3] (b) The student would need to add evidence of investigating the actual problem at their specific cafeteria – for example, surveying students and staff about current container use, observing how much single-use plastic is actually discarded during a typical service, and researching existing reusable-container systems used elsewhere – and then write a design brief that is explicitly grounded in what that investigation found, rather than a general environmental claim. [3]

4. (a) Top-band Criterion B evidence specifically requires generating and evaluating a range of feasible design ideas against a testable specification, and justifying why the chosen idea was selected over the rejected alternatives. With only one idea presented and no specification to evaluate it against, there is no comparative evaluation for a moderator to credit, regardless of how well the single idea turned out – “this was the best option” is an assertion, not evidence of a comparison. [3] (b) The student would need to add a detailed, testable design specification (covering criteria such as cost, materials and target-audience appeal), at least two or three genuinely different alternative design ideas, an evaluation of each idea against the specification, and an explicit, specification-based justification for why the chosen idea was selected over the others. [3]

5. (a) This conclusion is a general, unsupported statement of success rather than an objective test of the solution against the original specification. It does not identify which specific aspects of the original specification were met, does not report any measurable test result, and does not identify any area for improvement – all of which top-band Criterion D evidence specifically requires. [3] (b) A stronger version would test the solution against each specific point in the original specification individually – for example: “Against the specification’s target of reducing single-use container waste by 30% over a two-week trial, the prototype achieved a measured 22% reduction. Student feedback (collected via a short survey) indicated the container’s size was well received, but its closure mechanism was reported as difficult to use by 40% of respondents, indicating a specific area for improvement in the next iteration.” This reports honest, specific, measurable results against the original specification and identifies a concrete area for improvement, rather than a general impression of success. [3]

6. Criterion A is likely to score poorly because there is no visible record of the inquiry and analysis that should have preceded the design brief – photographs of a finished prototype cannot demonstrate that a genuine problem was investigated or that a target audience’s need was analysed; written evidence of the original research, survey or observation work would need to be added. Criterion B is likely to score poorly for the same underlying reason: without documentation of a specification and a range of evaluated alternative ideas, there is no evidence that idea development, rather than the first idea attempted, produced the final design; specification and alternative-idea documentation would need to be added. Criterion C is partially supported by the photographs (which can show the finished prototype), but top-band evidence also requires a record of the build sequence and any changes made along the way, which photographs alone do not provide; a build log or journal would need to be added. Criterion D cannot be evidenced at all by photographs of the finished product; specific, measurable test results against the original specification, and identified areas for improvement, would need to be added. In every case, the underlying issue is the same: a strong final product is not, on its own, evidence of the process that produced it, and MYP Design’s ePortfolio moderation specifically rewards documented process, not finished-product quality alone. [8]

7. Because each criterion requires a specific depth and kind of documentation, not just completion of the corresponding activity – a student can “do” the inquiring-and-analysing stage by briefly reading about a topic without ever surveying or observing a real target audience, “do” the developing-ideas stage by sketching only one idea without genuine comparative evaluation, “do” the creating stage without logging the process or any changes made, and “do” the evaluating stage with only a vague impression rather than specification-based testing. Moving through the stages in sequence provides the natural opportunity to generate strong evidence, but it is the depth and specificity of what is documented at each stage, not simply having completed the stage, that determines whether the corresponding criterion is evidenced at a top-band level. [4]

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Design, from 2014, (c) 2015 – the same source cited by the study guide and revision notes. Verified 2026-09-06.