Year 10 Product Design – “Chindogu” – Useless Design

Topic: “Chindogu” – Useless Design (Approximately 6 lessons)

Year Group: Year 10

Focus:

1. Creativity

2. Sketching skills

3. Modelling skills

What we will be learning

• Students will be learning about products that have a perceived advantage but in reality are completely useless such as water proof tea bags and a fan to cool your soup. They will then use their creativity skills to develop their own useless product
• Students will also develop their sketching and modelling skills before presenting their useless idea in a little display stand

Why is this important? Where does this link to future/past learning?

• Students often spend a long time developing a design that they believe to be advantageous to the user, and fail to see obvious flaws within their design. By spending time thinking about what makes a product “useless” they will avoid these things in the future and be able to develop products that are actually “useful”.
• This product is a lot of fun and helps students realise that although there is a lot of thinking in volved in this subject, the hard work can also be fun.
• The sketching/mind mapping/modelling skills all build on past learning and will support any future design work also.

How will this topic be assessed? Formative and summative

• Formative assessment happens in real time in class with feedback given students as they undertake design activities
• Summative assessment happens at the end of this short project when students submit their design. The assessment happens by comparative judgement and rank order as is the case with all design work. Once rank order is achieved a student will be awarded a grade 1-9.

What make a strong piece of work in this topic, and what can I do to stretch myself in this topic?

• A strong piece of work in this topic is creative and will fulfil all of the criteria set out in lesson 1 to be a “useless design”
• Modelling and sketching skills will be strong and the student’s sketchbook will be a rich variety of design ideas that a colourful, creative and annotated informatively.
• To stretch themselves students should practice their sketching and CAD skills such as TinkerCAD and Onshape and present their ideas digitally as well in physical 3d format.