IB MYP Design: The Four Assessment Criteria in Practice -- Revision Notes

The Design Cycle revision notes and assessment revision notes set out the design cycle’s four stages and the four criteria that map onto them. These notes go further, working through what genuinely top-band evidence looks like for each criterion with a worked example, since a project can move through all four design-cycle stages without producing top-band evidence for the corresponding criterion at each one.

Criterion A: Inquiring and analysing

Top-band evidence identifies a genuine problem needing a solution, analyses the need for that solution with reference to a real target audience or client, and researches existing similar products or solutions before writing a design brief.

Worked example: A lower-band response to “design a solution for reducing food waste in a school canteen” might jump straight to a brief without establishing why food waste happens at that specific canteen. Top-band Criterion A evidence first investigates the actual problem (e.g. surveying students and staff, observing canteen practices, researching existing food-waste-reduction solutions used elsewhere), and only then writes a design brief grounded in that specific, evidenced analysis of the target audience’s actual need.

Criterion B: Developing ideas

Top-band evidence writes a detailed, testable design specification that genuinely drives development of a solution, generates and evaluates a range of feasible design ideas against that specification, and presents the chosen solution with justified reasoning for why it was selected over the alternatives.

Worked example: Top-band Criterion B evidence does not present only one idea – it generates several genuinely different possible solutions, evaluates each against the specification’s testable criteria (e.g. cost, materials, target-audience appeal), and explains specifically why the chosen design best meets the specification compared with the rejected alternatives, rather than simply asserting that the final choice is best.

Criterion C: Creating the solution

Top-band evidence follows a detailed, logically sequenced plan to create a prototype sufficient for testing and evaluation, including how time, resources and any risks were managed during creation, with changes to the original plan justified and recorded as they occur.

Worked example: A top-band Criterion C log records not just the final prototype but the sequence followed to build it, and explicitly notes any point where the original plan had to change (e.g. a material substitution due to availability), explaining why the change was made and how it affected the following steps – a project that produces only a finished prototype with no record of the process followed to reach it cannot demonstrate top-band Creating the solution evidence, regardless of how good the final prototype looks.

Criterion D: Evaluating

Top-band evidence designs specific, measurable tests against the original specification, carries them out, and objectively evaluates the solution’s success against each specification point individually – including identifying specific areas for improvement and explaining the solution’s real impact on its intended client or target audience, rather than a general statement that the project “worked well.”

Worked example: Rather than concluding “the prototype canteen food-waste solution was successful,” top-band Criterion D evidence tests the solution against each specific point in the original specification (e.g. did it reduce measured food waste by a target amount over a trial period?), reports the actual test results honestly even where they fall short of the specification, and identifies specific, actionable improvements based on that evidence.

Why the four criteria mirror the design cycle’s own stages

Because each criterion maps directly onto one design-cycle stage – inquiring and analysing (the problem stage), developing ideas (the specification stage), creating the solution (the build stage), evaluating (the test stage) – a project that moves through all four stages in sequence has a natural structure for generating evidence for all four criteria, provided each stage is documented with the depth described above rather than treated as a box to tick before moving to the next.

A note on the ePortfolio

Because MYP Design’s eAssessment is submitted as an ePortfolio rather than a timed written paper, the depth described above for each criterion is not optional supporting detail – it is the actual evidence a moderator sees and marks. A finished prototype photograph alone, without the accompanying inquiry, specification, planning and testing documentation described in each section above, gives a moderator no basis to award marks against Criteria A, B or D at all, regardless of how well the prototype itself performs.

Self-test

1. What must top-band Criterion A evidence include beyond identifying a problem?
2. Why is generating only one design idea insufficient for top-band Criterion B evidence?
3. What must a top-band Criterion C log record beyond the finished prototype?
4. Why does concluding “the project worked well” fail to demonstrate top-band Criterion D evidence?
5. Which design-cycle stage does each of the four criteria correspond to?

Answers: 1. A genuine analysis of the need for a solution, grounded in evidence about a real target audience or client, plus research into existing similar solutions, before writing the design brief. 2. Because top-band evidence requires generating and evaluating a range of feasible ideas against the specification, and justifying why the chosen idea was selected over specific alternatives, which is impossible to demonstrate with only one idea presented. 3. A record of the sequence followed to create the prototype, including any changes made to the original plan and the reasoning behind them. 4. Because top-band evaluation requires testing the solution against each specific point in the original specification individually and reporting honest results, not a general, unsupported statement of success. 5. 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).

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Design, from 2014, (c) 2015 – the same source already cited by the full syllabus guide, which first reproduced the four criteria’s names and their mapping onto the design cycle from it.