When students can hand off the design process

Technology at Years 7 to 8 has always required students to move through a process: brief, design, prototype, evaluate, refine. Each stage depends on decisions. AI tools can now generate design briefs, suggest specifications, produce visual mockups, and evaluate options against stated criteria. The output can look like a design process without a student having gone through one. The structure of the task now needs to make the design decisions themselves the assessable artefact.

A three-part card completed at the briefing stage, before any design work begins. It names what tools may assist with, what must remain the student's own decision, and what evidence of their thinking will be shown.

1. Introduce the Boundary Card at the briefing stage. Make it part of the task sheet rather than a separate form. Students complete it before any design work begins.
2. Discuss as a class: what decisions belong to the designer? In Technology these typically include identifying the need, setting the brief, choosing between design options given constraints, and evaluating against fit-for-purpose criteria. Students record these as "I must decide."
3. Students nominate what tools or methods may help. The boundary is explicit and agreed before any design work begins.
4. At the midpoint of the unit, review the card in a brief checkpoint conversation. Students who are drifting from their stated conditions can re-engage before the task is complete.
5. At submission, the Boundary Card travels with the design portfolio. Students add a brief note: which boundaries held, and where they made decisions that surprised them.

The Boundary Card produces evidence of learning that is secure regardless of what tools a student used because it makes the conditions of use explicit and agreed before work begins. A student who used a tool for sketching but made deliberate decisions about brief, constraints, and evaluation has demonstrably engaged with the design process.