A Design Agency

Your Design Agency: A Guide for Year 9 Designers

Welcome, Year 9 designers! For this exciting new unit, “Designing for Inclusivity,” you’re not just students – you’re part of a professional design agency!

What is a Design Agency?

Imagine a team of creative problem-solvers who work together to make new products, tools, or systems. That’s a design agency! Companies and people (called “clients”) come to design agencies with problems they need help solving.

In our classroom, your “design agency” will be your small group. You’ll work together, just like real designers, to tackle big challenges. And guess what? Your teacher is “The Client” in this project!

How Your Design Agency Will Work

When “The Client” (your teacher) gives you a design challenge (we call this a “design brief”), your agency will follow a special process to come up with amazing solutions.

Here’s how your agency will function, step-by-step:

1. Understand the Challenge (The “Wicked Problem”)

  • Listen to The Client: First, your agency will carefully listen to “The Client” explain the problem. In our unit, this problem will be about making things more accessible for different people (like the elderly, people with disabilities, or refugees).

  • Ask Questions: Don’t be afraid to ask “The Client” questions! Real design problems are often “wicked problems” – they’re tricky, don’t have one easy answer, and sometimes the information isn’t all there at the start. Asking questions helps you understand the problem better.

  • Empathize: Your agency will think deeply about the people you are designing for. What are their daily lives like? What challenges do they face? How do they feel? This is called “empathy,” and it’s super important in design.

2. Brainstorm Ideas (Divergent Thinking)

  • Think Wild! Once you understand the problem, your agency will brainstorm as many ideas as possible. No idea is too silly or too strange at this stage! Write them down, sketch them out. The goal is quantity over quality for now.

  • Collaborate: Share your ideas with your agency members. Build on each other’s thoughts. Sometimes the best ideas come from combining different people’s suggestions.

3. Develop & Choose Concepts

  • Refine Ideas: Look at all your brainstormed ideas. Which ones seem most promising? Your agency will pick a few of the best ideas and start to develop them more clearly. This means adding details, thinking about how they would work, and sketching them more carefully.

  • Make Decisions: As an agency, you’ll discuss the pros and cons of each concept. Which one best solves the problem? Which one is most exciting? You’ll need to agree on the strongest concept (or two) to move forward with.

4. Build & Test (Prototyping)

  • Make it Real (Sort Of!): Your agency will create a simple version of your idea. This could be a quick drawing, a digital mock-up on a tablet, or a physical model made from cardboard or recycled materials. This is called a “prototype.” It doesn’t have to be perfect!

  • Get Feedback: You’ll show your prototype to other design agencies (your classmates) and “The Client.” They will give you feedback. Listen carefully to what they say – it’s not about being right or wrong, but about making your design better.

5. Adapt & Improve (Iteration & Disruptions!)

  • Change is Good: Here’s where design gets really interesting! “The Client” might introduce new information or a sudden change to the project. This is like real life in a design agency – things change, and you have to be ready to adapt.

  • Don’t Panic! These “disruptions” are designed to help you learn how designers think when faced with unexpected challenges. Your agency will need to discuss how to change your design to fit the new information. Sometimes this means a small tweak, sometimes a big change, or even starting a new idea.

  • Keep Improving: You’ll use the feedback and any new information to refine your prototype. This process of making, testing, and improving is called “iteration.”

6. Pitch Your Idea!

  • Show Your Work: At the end of the unit, your design agency will present your final solution to “The Client” and your classmates.

  • Explain Your Journey: You’ll explain the problem you tackled, how your design works, and importantly, how your agency adapted and solved problems along the way, especially when things changed!

Working in a design agency is all about teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, and being flexible. Get ready to think like real designers!

Remember that AI is not sentient. These responses are the result of an algorithm and may be wrong or subject to bias. You must always use your judgment about the appropriate use of these AI generated responses.

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