AQA AS Level Design and Technology: Product Design Past Papers & Mark Schemes

Section A multiple-choice marks are highly recoverable. Build flashcards for material properties (tensile strength, ductility, hardness, thermal conductivity), manufacturing processes (injection moulding, vacuum forming, rotational casting, milling), and joint types (mortise and tenon, dovetail, scarf, halving). 80% of Section A marks come from this vocabulary. Section B questions reward systematic product analysis using ACCESS FM (Aesthetics, Cost, Customer, Environment, Size, Safety, Function, Materials) or PIES (Primary, Industrial, Ergonomic, Specialty). Practise applying one framework consistently to past-paper stimulus images, writing eight bullet observations under each heading. Section C essays on sustainability typically reward students who name specific case studies: Vitsoe 606, Patagonia's Worn Wear programme, Phillippe Starck's Juicy Salif, the Dyson Air Multiplier. Memorise four contemporary case studies plus four historical (Rams, Bauhaus, Eames, Sapper) and have a sentence-length analysis of each ready. For the NEA, the most common mark-loss is in evaluation: students describe what their prototype does rather than evaluate against the original client brief. Always write the brief on the first page of your evaluation and tick off each criterion explicitly.