Year 10 GSCE Product Design students went to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to participate in a Creative Prototyping workshop by Tom Gayler.

The idea was that students developed an iterative design approach. Tom is a commercial designer and industry renowned. He began by explaining to the students the importance of good prototyping and used his commercial projects as case studies. This all linked closely to the new GCSE specification where references to commercial projects and processes are encouraged as well developing techniques to break students away from pre-conceived design ideas.

The students were invited to research products from the Japan gallery that they might not have been familiar with. This allowed the students to develop their curiosity and to be able to enquire deeply about function and avoid pre-conceptions. Students presented their findings back to the whole group.

From here students were encouraged to develop their own product ideas using their findings from collection as a starting point. Creativity was encouraged through different approaches and a variety of iterations to their designs. Finally, the students developed a 3D model of their products, making multiple modifications and alterations to these too. The outcomes from this workshop were both original and innovative and the V&A staff were impressed by the levels of creativity.

It was a long trip back from London in heavy traffic, but it was worth it for getting some great instruction and using the collections from a world-class museum.

Photos from the trip coming soon...

Mr T Rose
Teacher – D&T