Generating and exploring design ideas

The most-cited ideas-stage weakness is a narrow range: fewer than three ideas, or three essentially the same. A narrow theme for inspiration produces near-identical work. The stage rewards a wide exploration of DIFFERENT solutions — colour and size variants of one concept are not different ideas. If two ideas fit the same sentence, they are the same idea twice.

A second fault is treating the ideas page as a drawing exercise. Candidates draw neat sketches but leave them un-annotated, or write notes that restate the obvious — labelling a chair "chair". The scheme credits notes that ADD information, so empty labels and bare sketches gain nothing. Good notes give the material and how it meets a spec point.

When asked to select or evaluate, candidates DESCRIBE their ideas ("this one has four legs") instead of EVALUATING them — weighing each against the requirements, with strengths AND weaknesses, to reach a justified choice. Describing is not evaluating. The remedy: hold every idea against EACH specification point, producing judgement not description.

Candidates propose ideas that satisfy only PART of the brief — a container that is actually an enclosed game, or a rack for many bikes when one upright bike was specified. Such ideas are CAPPED because they do not meet ALL the stated requirements, however well drawn. Check each idea against every requirement; one that misses a point should not be carried forward.

Some candidates design the wrong thing because they misread the brief or a key word — for example misreading "terrain" or "dispensing" and answering a different problem. However good the sketches, an idea that solves the wrong problem cannot gain the marks. Read the brief and every key term carefully, and check each idea answers what was asked before developing it.

When selecting, candidates repeat the SAME evaluation for all their ideas — "it would work well" against each — instead of giving each idea its own justified judgement. Repeating one evaluation loses marks as it does not distinguish them. Each idea needs a distinct judgement against the specification, its strengths and weaknesses, so the choice is genuinely reasoned.

A specific wrong belief: that a good ideas page is judged on how NEAT the drawings are, and that several tidy versions of one favourite count as a "wide range". Examiners reward conceptually DIFFERENT solutions and informative annotation, not drawing polish or cosmetic variety. Colour and size variants of one concept are still ONE idea, however neat.