ENGINEERING DESIGN

What is Engineering Design?

• Creative planning process that leads to useful products and systems
• There are no perfect designs
• Design requirements are made by criteria and constraints
Criteria and Constraints
Criteria
Identify the desired elements and features of a product or system and usually relate to their
purpose or function
Constraints
Such as size and cost, establish the limits on a design
What is the Design Process?
• Design process is a purposeful method of planning practical solutions to problems
• The design process is never final; there are always multiple solutions to a problem
• The design process is influenced by requirements called criteria and constraints
Dieter Rams Principle of Good Design
1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally-friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible
Problem Formulation:
Articulate the need as an expression of dissatisfaction with the current situation
• Recognizing the Need: • Identifying the Client • Do we know who this is?
• Do they know what their “need” is?
Gathering the Client Needs:
• Interviews • Questionnaires • Focus Groups • Be the customer
Rules for interacting with the Client:
• Keep a broad perspective
• The client may communicate/pose a potential solution and not their
true/original need
• As a designer, you may lose scope of that need, and head in the wrong
direction from the start
• Always ask “Why”, when someone says “I need ...”
Defining the Goal:
Goal Statement:
• A goal statement is a brief, general, and ideal response to the need
statement
• Carefully consider the scope/boundaries of the Goal Statement
Problem Formulation
• The problem formulation step is a “critical step” in the design process, as well as a clear
statement of “Needs” and “Goals”
• Failure to define the need statement & goal statement will almost certainly lead to a design
failure
Design Objective:
Design Objectives are “quantifiable expectations of performance” that you aim for,
or try to achieve
• Identify performance characteristics that are of most interest to the client
• Describe those characteristics in a way ‘you and the client’ can ‘decide’ if the design
meets expectations
• Describe the conditions under which a design will operate
Information gathering:
Benchmark, analogies, published media, people, worldwide web etc.
Concept Generation:
• This is a creative phase of the design process, where several ideas or concepts are
generated. It is the divergent phase where many possibilities are considered without too much
judgement
• For a typical design project, at least three conceptual design alternatives should be
generated. These concepts should be well documented, using sketches and descriptions
• There is no formula or set of rules to generate ideas out of thin air
Strategy 1
Study and review existing design examples on a periodic basis. Creativity cannot occur in a
vacuum of knowledge! It often comes from exposure to many other ideas, previous
experience, and practical lessons.
Strategy 2 : Illustration and drawing is an important way to generate new ideas and record
them. Some designers are abstract thinkers while others are visual and spatial thinkers. By
preparing a drawing, limitations can be revealed, or ideas can be built upon.
Strategy 3 : Work within a team environment to generate new ideas. In this case, techniques
such as: Brainstorming, or the 6-3-5 method, can be an effective group activity for the
generation of new ideas.
Strategy 4: Morphological Analysis is a technique that encourages a designer to consider the
combination of two seemingly unrelated concepts. Morphological analysis often leads to
impractical ideas, however, those ideas may eventually lead to practical ones.
Strategy 5: Allow ample time for Reflection on ideas, and allow for iteration. Creativity cannot
be rushed, and setting a strict time-line for the creative phase may limit the best solutions
from emerging. Iteration is important, since often the original concept leads to a better idea.
Sometimes an idea suddenly emerges for a design solution, while the designer is in the midst
of another unrelated activity.
Project Planning:
• Graphical portrayal of activities and event
• Shows dependency relationships between tasks/activities in a project
• Clearly shows tasks that must precede (precedence) or follow (succeeding) other tasks in a
logical manner
• Clear representation of plan – a powerful tool for planning and controlling project
Activity : any portions of project (tasks) which required by project, uses up resource and
consumes time – may involve labor, paper work, contractual negotiations, machinery
operations Activity on Arrow (AOA) showed as arrow, AON – Activity on Node
Event : beginning or ending points of one or more activities, instantaneous point in time, also
called ‘nodes’
Network : Combination of all project activities and the events
• Immediate predecessors for a particular activity are the activities that, when
completed, enable the start of the activity in question.
Decision Making:
• An important aspect of ‘design’ is the decision making process, where we must choose
between alternatives
• Choosing between design alternatives may be complex, when there are many ‘Design
Objectives’ (quantifiable measures of performance) to consider
Possible Methods
• Try all the possible alternatives • Take a Poll • Ranked Lists • Other
There are various ‘techniques and tools’ available, to help make a
decision between design alternatives
• Rankings • Tables • Weighting factors • Consider question “What could happen if...?”
Human centered Design:
Understanding USER problems and then solving them
All things need human centered design
Design is not what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.
HCD framework:
• Know where to begin • More reliable than intuition
• Reminds you to continuously improve • Keep the user at the center your decisions
Research(discover goals and needs) -> Ideate(generate ideas)-> Prototype(produce something
tangible)-> Evaluate(determine ease of use)-> Launch(release of users and measure)
5 main steps to any design thinking process:
Step 1: Empathize Step 2: Define the Problem Step 3: Ideate Step 4: Prototype
Step 5: Test
1: The purpose of this step is to conduct interviews that give you an idea about what people
really care about. We need to empathize with their situation
e.g-old man walking problem.
2: Looking at the interviews, you can now understand the actual needs that people are trying
to fulfil with certain activities. One way to do that is to underline activities that the people
mentioned when talking about their problems:
• like going for a walk • meeting old friends for tea • simply going grocery shopping around
the corner store
3:After your analysis, formulate a problem statement: Some elderly are afraid to be lonely.
The want to stay connected. Now focus only on the problem statement and come up with
ideas that solve the problem
The point is not to get a perfect idea, but rather to come up with as many ideas:
like unique virtual reality experiences, senior friendly hover boards or a modified pushcart.
Whatever it is, sketch up your best ideas and show them to the people you are trying to help,
so you get their feedback
4: Now take a moment to reflect on what you have learned from your conversations about the
different ideas. Ask yourself, how does your idea fit in the context of people's actual lives. Your
solution could be a combination of a new idea and what is already being used.
Then connect the dots, sketch up your final solution and go build a real prototype that's just
good enough to be tested.
5. Now test your prototype with actual users.
Don't defend your idea in case people don't like it, the point is to learn what works and what
didn't, so any feedback is great. Then go back to ideation or prototyping and apply your
learning. Repeat the process until you have a prototype that works and solves the real
problem.. Now you are ready to change the world
Design Thinking as Toolbox:
Design Thinking works only when tools and methods used are aligned with this new way of
thinking
Seven tools that give an impression how Design Thinking projects work
Stakeholder Map Empathy Map 5-Whys AEIOU-Method Persona-Method
Observation Storytelling
Tools for Design Thinking:
• Can use to identify and execute opportunities for growth and innovation
Visualization Journey mapping (or experience mapping)
Value chain analysis Mind mapping Rapid concept development
Assumption testing Prototyping Customer co-creation Learning launches
Storytelling Innovation Flowcharts Question ladder

Why Should I Mind Map?

• Mind maps structure information

• Mind maps enhance productivity

• Mind maps foster creativity

• Mind maps improve memory and recall

Innovation Flowchart
• Gives a detailed overview of the various stages in an innovation process
• Allow to look ahead to understand what I need to do to bring my idea to life
• This chart allows you to map out your process before you begin
• Set the stages, skills, and risks that are relevant to your project and keep it on your wall as
you move through them
Question ladder
• This tool is a quick and easy way to start asking your questions in a few different ways, and
to start combining questions in order to reach more complex answers
• It provides a structured overview of what goes in to a question
• It shows how to combine a range of who, what, where, when, why and how questions
coupled with the words like is, did, can, will, would and might
Journey Mapping
• Experience mapping is an ethnographic research method that focuses on tracing the
customer’s “journey”
• As he or she interacts with an organization while in the process of receiving a service
• With special attention to emotional highs and lows.
Experience mapping is used with the objective of identifying needs that customers are often
unable to articulate
SCAMPER(for products):
Technique that is often used by many to ignite the silent creative genius lying within them.
Substitute, combine, adapt, magnify, put to other uses, eliminate, rearrange.
• SCAMPER is an acronym for seven words which are used to direct brainstorming questions
• For example, imagine being in a brainstorming session in your organization with the need to
come up with the best design for an already existing product
• How do you go about brainstorming for such ideas?
• You ask questions, right?
These questions become more effective if they are built around the SCAMPER technique

Task analysis grid (for services)

• One of the tools that can be used in service design
• To avoid the miscommunication between designers and stakeholders that can occur due to
the large number of documentations
• The task analysis grid is a visual tool that tracks the experience of the consumers when using
a specific service
• This tracking includes the different touch points with the service, the pain points, and his or
her wishes to improve the service
• This experience is then translated into prioritized tasks for the team members
• The definition of the problem includes the consumer persona and how he or she complain
about the current situation
• Before, After, and Future scenes are the expected scenarios before fixing the problem, after
fixing the problem
• Sub-Tasks includes the steps that consumer do before, during, and after using the service
• Scenario includes the scenarios associated with each of the steps that consumer’s face
during using the service
• Pain-Points includes the pain or the bad experience that cause the consumer to suffer from
the service
• Functionality refers to the functions that need to be fixed or added in order to the improve
the service design provided to the consumer
Each of the functions is assigned a priority in order to define its importance between all the
stakeholders