Official source: QCAA Design General senior syllabus 2025 v1.3, January 2026. The QCAA subject landing lists v1.3 for students completing in 2026 or beyond and was last updated 15 June 2026. Both were checked 29 September 2026. Page numbers below are printed syllabus pages, not PDF viewer indices. No Australian Curriculum P–10 code is invented for this senior subject.
| Official location and wording focus | Where this pack begins | Limit still to teach or verify locally |
|---|---|---|
| Printed pp.7–8: QCAA design process has Explore and Develop phases, each with divergent/convergent thinking; procedural knowledge and representation are integrated across units | A source→problem→ideas→revision rehearsal appears in the four original aids and daily scripts | This organiser is not QCAA's diagram or a substitute for comparing the separately named third-party models. Its fictional problem does not satisfy a real-world stakeholder brief. |
| Printed p.13, Unit 1: Stakeholder-centred design: purposeful documented response to stakeholder needs/wants, explore and develop phases; objectives 1–7 | Evidence logs, problem/criteria statements, varied initial ideas, one low-fidelity revision | This 250-minute slice does not deliver every objective at assessed depth or the notional 55-hour unit. |
| Printed p.14, Topic 1: Designing for others: breadth of design professions and scope | Day 1 connects generic professional roles to imagined outputs | Named designers, genuine professional exemplars and broader research still required. |
| Printed p.14: use and compare listed design process models | The original evidence-to-revision aid is a teaching organiser only | It is not a reproduction, substitute or claimed equivalent of the QCAA-listed models. A later lesson must compare the named models with properly sourced originals. |
| Printed p.14: balance aesthetic, cultural, economic, social and technical features | Days 2–4, 7–9 flag competing requirements in fiction | Cultural requirements are unknown unless a particular stakeholder supplies them. No invented cultural facts. |
| Printed p.14: simple/complex design problems; stakeholders include users, clients, audiences and technicians; define problems from analysed requirements and existing designs | Days 2–4 identify different roles, distinguish source from inference, frame a problem | This pack has fictional briefs and no actual stakeholder interview or empirical existing-design study. |
| Printed pp.14–15: write a problem with stakeholder features and constraints; identify and describe design criteria, including usefulness and accessibility | Days 3–4, 8–10 write checkable criteria and review choices against them | Criterion claims are about paper concepts, not demonstrated real-world accessibility or usability. |
| Printed p.15: principles of good design include innovative, useful, aesthetic, accessible and sustainable; named styles and designers also appear | Checkable usefulness/access features begin to inform decisions | A complete principles, historical-design and design-style sequence is still required; the syllabus use of “accessible” is not a full technical accessibility standard. |
| Printed pp.16–17: ideation/schematic sketching, physical/digital low-fidelity prototyping, divergent ideas, feedback, evaluation and refinement | Days 6–9 make labelled layouts or tactile/digital diagrams and revise a concept | Only an initial rehearsal. No construction, user testing, actual feedback interview or full proposal. |
| Printed pp.15–17: design styles, elements and principles, a possible stakeholder interview, source/IP documentation, visual proposal | Only initial representation and justification are rehearsed | Named designers, sourced historical designs, comparison, actual stakeholder feedback, IP record and full proposal require later teaching. |
| Printed p.6: embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in planning, teaching and assessment | No First Nations cultural material is invented here | School should plan appropriate, locally informed content and permissions rather than treating generic fictional cards as that coverage. |
| Printed p.5: schools develop 2–4 assessments across Units 1–2, at least one in each unit, assessing each objective at least once; printed p.12 reporting | Days 5/10 are public formative checks with next moves | Not school instruments. The school selects, administers, judges and reports its own assessment. |
Teacher adaptation: Reorder to fit the school's course map and authentic local brief. Verify a real brief's stakeholder consent, accessibility, safety, costs, cultural information and constraints with responsible people. These cards supply only fictional evidence. If a learner uses text or tactile objects for a spatial target, assess the represented spatial relationship and separately record any support; never infer an impairment or design need from the learner's chosen mode.