Testing and Design Development Proposals

How many marks is this bit worth? 4
How many pages should it occupy? Maximum 3

There’s testing and there’s testing. Simply providing a couple of sentences saying what you think is good or bad about your project is one thing: Devising a set of tests to see how well your project meets the specification is another.

Test your project against the needs of your consumer. For this you will need to identify key criteria from your specification to test against. For example;

• 'The light must provide adequate illumination for reading with'
• 'The product must be capable of storing all of the items that were identified when I carried out my intended use research'

For each of these criteria plan an appropriate testing method, eg Photographic evidence showing the level of illumination provided or all of the items comfortably stored.

In addition , you could conduct an interview with a selection of people from your target market to find out their opinions about your work. This could be conducted through the use of a questionnaire, or simply allowing them to handle the model to see how durable it is.

If you have designed and made a play unit for 4 – 7 year olds, allow them to play with it and observe how they rip it to shreds. Write down your conclusions from your testing, what have you discovered? Have your findings been as predicted?

Use the comments or the results of questionnaires from the intended users to gain feedback. For example;

• ‘43% of potential consumers thought that my project would definitely be suitable for storing their gardening equipment. If I were to redo this project I would improve the aesthetics as shown in the diagram below…’
  

If you had to do your project again, what would you change? What was successful and what was a bit of a bodge job? Did you use the correct material or would a different type of material be more suitable? Are you pleased with its overall appearance?

Suggest possible improvements that could be made to develop your project. This should be in the form of sketches and notes. Identify areas where the design itself could be modified to take into account your findings from your testing. For example: the book cover showed little resistance to childrens’ sticky fingers, so I propose to laminate the cover with clear Fablon.

You must also say how well your manufacturing control system worked (the method of production that you used that would lend itself to making a batch of 50) and what changes you could make to your manufacturing control system in order to ensure efficient batch production.

Your evaluation should be an honest report of your project. Do not try to fudge over areas that you are less pleased with, as you will be able to acquire more marks for commenting on this than ignoring it.