AQA GCSE Design and Technology

New technology changes how things are made, who makes them, how they are sold and what people expect from them. A designer has to judge each change from several points of view at once: the business, the worker, the user, the community and the planet.

Industry

Automation means machines doing tasks with little or no human control, and robots are the programmable machines that do much of it. A robot arm on a car line welds or paints the same joint thousands of times to the same standard, works through the night and never tires, and it can be sent into places that are dangerous for people, such as paint booths full of fumes. The cost is the price of buying and programming the equipment, and the jobs that repetitive manual work used to provide. Workers are retrained to programme, maintain and supervise the machines, so the job changes more often than it disappears.

The layout of a workplace changes around the machinery. Factories are planned around robot cells and conveyors, with guarding to keep people clear of moving arms. Collaborative robots (cobots) are built with force sensors and rounded shapes so they can work beside a person without a cage. Offices have moved towards hot desking, video meetings and working from home, which reduces the floor space a company needs.

Buildings themselves use new technology. Sensors switch lighting and heating off in empty rooms, smart meters track energy use, parts are made off site as prefabricated modules and assembled quickly, and 3D printers have been used to build small structures. Tools and equipment change too. Cordless tools run on lithium-ion batteries, laser cutters and 3D printers sit in school workshops, and digital callipers and laser measures give quicker, more accurate readings than a rule.

Enterprise

Enterprise is setting up a business around a new idea, and technology has made the first steps cheaper.

• Crowd funding raises the money for an idea from many people, each giving a small amount through a website, usually in return for a reward such as an early copy of the product. The designer avoids borrowing from a bank, and the campaign doubles as market research because it shows whether people want the product. The risks are that the target may not be reached, in which case the project is often not funded at all, and that the backers expect delivery on time.
• Virtual marketing and retail means promoting and selling online: social media, search adverts, online shops and increasingly virtual try-on tools. A business can reach customers anywhere without the rent and staff of a shop. The customer cannot touch or try the product, so returns are higher, and the business competes with every other seller online.
• A co-operative is a business owned and run by its members, who might be the workers, the customers or the producers. Each member usually has one vote whatever the amount invested, and the profits are shared among them or put back into the business. Farmers' co-operatives, for example, combine to sell their crops at a better price than each could get alone.
• Fair trade is an agreement that producers in developing countries are paid a guaranteed minimum price, plus an extra premium to spend on their community, and that working conditions are safe. Cotton, cocoa and coffee are the usual examples. Products carry a certification mark, and they often cost more to buy, which some customers are willing to pay.

Sustainability

The earth's resources fall into two groups. Finite resources, such as oil, coal, gas and metal ores, will run out because they take millions of years to form. Non-finite (renewable) resources, such as timber from managed forests, wind and sunlight, can be replaced or do not get used up. The more a society consumes, the faster the finite resources go and the more waste it produces.

Waste can be sent to landfill, burned in an energy-from-waste plant, reused or recycled. Landfill uses land and can release methane as waste rots. Electrical waste is a growing problem because old phones and computers contain metals that are worth recovering and chemicals that should not leak into soil. Designers reduce disposal problems by choosing materials that can be recycled and by making products that are easy to take apart.

People: technology push and market pull

A product can start in two ways. In technology push a new invention or material comes first and a company then looks for a use for it, as happened when touchscreens became cheap enough to put in phones. In market pull customers show a need first, through complaints or surveys or a gap in the shops, and the company develops a product to fill it. Much of what is sold is a mixture: a technology exists and the demand makes it worth developing.

New technology also changes jobs. Some roles fade, such as typists or manual assembly, while others appear, such as app developers, data analysts and robot technicians. Many people now work flexibly, from home or on short contracts arranged through online platforms.

Culture and society

Fashion and trends are driven partly by technology. Social media spreads a look across the world in days, and fast fashion brands respond by making cheap copies of catwalk designs in small batches and changing the stock every few weeks. Smart fabrics, wearable technology and digital printing all start as novelties and then become part of ordinary clothing.

Designers also respect people of different faiths and beliefs. Some examples are avoiding religious symbols on disposable or disrespectful items, offering modest clothing, making sure ingredients and packaging for food are acceptable to religious groups, and avoiding animal-derived materials in products meant for vegans and vegetarians.

Products should not have a negative effect on others, which is the idea behind inclusive design: making things usable by as many people as possible. For disabled users that might mean tactile markings, large buttons, voice control or step-free access. For elderly users it might mean larger print, good contrast, lighter weights and easy-grip handles, and for people of different religions it means the points above. A designer who asks "who could not use this?" early finds problems that are expensive to fix after production.

Environment

New products affect the environment in both directions. Positive effects include continuous improvement, where a manufacturer keeps making small changes to reduce waste and energy use, and efficient working, such as lighter products that need less fuel to transport. Negative effects include pollution of air, water and land from manufacture and disposal, and the carbon dioxide released when fuels are burned, which contributes to global warming. The greenhouse effect is the trapping of heat in the atmosphere by gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, and a warming climate means more extreme weather and rising sea levels.

Evaluating new technology critically

A new technology should be judged from more than one perspective, because what benefits the manufacturer may harm the user or the environment. Four ideas help.

• Planned obsolescence is designing a product to become out of date or stop working after a limited time so that customers buy a replacement. A phone that no longer receives software updates, or a printer that rejects non-branded ink cartridges, are cases of it. It keeps sales up, but it creates waste and annoys customers.
• Design for maintenance is the opposite approach: products are built so that parts can be reached, repaired and replaced, for example with screws in place of glue and standard batteries that can be swapped. The product lasts longer and less goes to waste.
• Ethics asks whether something is right as well as possible: where the materials came from, how the workers were treated, and whether the product could be misused.
• The environment asks what the product costs the planet across its whole life, from the materials to disposal.