IB MYP Design: The Four Assessment Criteria in Practice

This guide works through what genuinely top-band evidence looks like for each of IB Middle Years Programme Design’s four assessment criteria, applied to a real design project. The Design Cycle revision notes and how MYP Design is assessed set out the design cycle’s four stages and the four criteria that map onto them – this guide goes further, since a project can move through all four design-cycle stages without producing top-band evidence for the corresponding criterion at each one.

Where this fits in the subject

MYP subjects are graded against four equally weighted criteria, each on an 8-point scale, assessed through an ePortfolio rather than a timed written paper. This means the depth of documentation at each design-cycle stage 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 below, gives a moderator no basis to award marks against Criteria A, B or D at all, regardless of how well the prototype itself performs.

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. 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 – 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. 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 (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. 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 – a material substitution due to availability, for example – 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.” 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 (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.

How to approach it

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) – moving through all four stages in sequence gives a natural structure for generating evidence against 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. Document as you work rather than reconstructing the process afterward from memory, since a moderator can generally tell the difference between contemporaneous process evidence and a tidied-up account written after the prototype was already finished. For every stage, ask explicitly which criterion this piece of documentation is meant to evidence, and check it against the specific expectations described above for that criterion, rather than assuming thorough work automatically translates into strong evidence on the page.

Common mistakes

Treating a criterion as evidenced simply because the corresponding design-cycle stage was completed – completing the “creating” stage of the design cycle is not the same as producing top-band Criterion C evidence, which specifically requires a documented, justified process log, not just a finished object. Presenting only one design idea under Criterion B, which makes it structurally impossible to demonstrate the comparative evaluation top-band evidence requires. Concluding an evaluation with a general, unsupported statement of success rather than testing the solution against each specific point in the original specification. Writing up the inquiry, specification or process documentation only after the practical work is finished, rather than as the work happens, which tends to produce vaguer, less specific evidence than genuine contemporaneous documentation.

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 and the revision notes already on the site. Verified 2026-09-06.