The factors that shape design, the nature of innovation, and successful and unsuccessful design cases.
These are the statements the Design and Technology syllabus makes about Innovation, Emerging Technology and Design Contexts. Dux records each one against the questions you answer, so you can see which of them you have actually been tested on and which have never been asked.
What makes an innovation succeed, and the technologies currently reshaping design practice.
How users, markets, regulation and environment constrain and enable a design.
Studying a successful or failed product to extract a transferable reason for its outcome.
The difference between improving an existing product and replacing its underlying principle.
Surveys, observation and prototypes as research tools, and the biases in each.
Standards, compliance and liability as design constraints rather than afterthoughts.
3D printing, CNC and laser cutting, and how they change what is economical to produce.
Patents, trademarks and designs, and what protection actually enables.
Why some products are adopted rapidly and others stall, using adopter categories.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander design traditions and what contemporary practice can learn from them.
HSC Design and Technology - Written Paper Shape is 40 marks in 90 minutes. Questions on Innovation, Emerging Technology and Design Contexts are not one shape repeated: the command word decides what the marker is looking for, and the mark value decides how much of it. These are the ones Design and Technology uses.
Dux writes practice for this module in exactly these shapes, so the drill is the same task the paper sets — not a general knowledge quiz with the module name on it.
Innovation, Emerging Technology and Design Contexts is module 2 of 3 in Design and Technology. Students routinely lose marks because a question spans two modules, so the neighbouring modules are worth reading next to this one.
Dux diagnoses Design and Technology dot point by dot point, then writes questions in the shape this course marks. Written answers come back marked against the bands.