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Engineering Design and Technology

The nature of engineering design

Dr Ashraf Afifi
BSc, MSc, PhD, FHEA

Senior Lecturer
of Engineering Management
Outline
• What is design?
• The nature of design
– Design activities
– Design problems
– How designers think
– Differences between experienced and novice designers

• Importance of design
• Types of design
• The nature of technology
– Technology-driven versus demand-driven innovation
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What is design?

The central activity of engineering design (Pahl et al., 2007)

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What is design?

Scope and role of design (Buchanan, 2001)

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What is design?
• “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing
existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon, 1996)
– Doctors design patient treatment plans, lawyers design contracts, farmers
design planting arrangements, engineers design all manner of engineered
artefacts

Design: Current and future state (Simon, 1996)

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What is design?
• “A systematic, intelligent process in which designers
generate, evaluate, and specify concepts for devices,
systems, or processes whose form and function achieve
clients’ objectives or users’ needs while satisfying a
specified set of constraints” (Dym et al., 2005)
• “The mental creation of a new product is the task of
design and development engineers, whereas its physical
realisation is the responsibility of production engineers”
(Pahl et al., 2007)

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What is design?
• Design is about understanding how things work
– “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how
it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it
works. To design something really well, you have to get it. You
have to really understand what it’s all about” (Steve Jobs)

• Design is about synthesis and creation

– “A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist,
inventor, mechanic, objective economist and
evolutionary strategist” (R. Buckminster Fuller)
Geodesic dome
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Design activities
• Designers have to:
– Communicate a final design proposal
– Evaluate alternative possible solution concepts
– Generate some solution concepts
– Explore the problem “territory”

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Design problems
• Design problems have:
– A goal to be achieved
– Some constraints within which the goal must be achieved
• Constraints set specific (usually quantitative) targets or limits

– Some criteria by which a good solution is recognised

• Criteria are more flexible and might be used for judging
between different design proposals, each of which meets the
specific constraint target
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Design problems
• Design problems are ill-defined problems
• Characteristics of ill-defined problems:
– There is no definitive formulation of the problem
– Any problem formulation may embody inconsistencies
– Formulations of the problem are solution dependent
– Proposing solutions is a means of understanding the
problem
– There is no definitive solution to the problem
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How designers think
• Because of the nature of design problems, designers tend to
be “solution-focussed”
– Whereas scientists tend to be “problem-focussed”

• Designers use solution conjectures as ways of exploring

and understanding the problem
– Problem and solution co-evolve in the design process

• Designers actively manage and control the process of design

– People who prefer the certainty of structured well-defined
problems will never appreciate the delight of being a designer
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Differences between experienced and novice designers
• Experienced designers: • Novice designers:
– Make rapid, controlled – Can become caught up in
exploration of the problem data gathering and analysis
– Move between solution
– Can become “fixated” on an
concepts and problem
exploration early solution concept

– Maintain a broad view – Can concentrate on

across several sub- exploring single sub-solution
solution alternatives in depth
– Make designing look easy – Need to practice and develop
and “intuitive” basic techniques
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Importance of design
• Impact on product cost:
– Decisions made in the conceptual
design phase cost very little in terms
of the overall product cost but have a
major effect on the cost of the
product

• Impact on product quality:

– You cannot compensate in
manufacturing for defects introduced
in the design phase

• Impact on product development

time:
Product cost commitment during phases
– Design should be conducted to of the design process (Ullman, 2010)
develop quality cost-competitive
products in the shortest time possible

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Types of design
• Original design: New tasks and problems are solved using either
new solutions or novel combination of known solutions
– Examples: The first iPhone, Maglev train, and the first web browser

• Adaptive design: Known and established solutions are adapted to

changed requirements
– Example: Adapting the ink-jet printing concept to spray binder to
hold particles in place in a rapid prototyping machine

• Variant design: Uses established solutions and varies the size and
arrangement of parts and assemblies
– Example: The size of a memory card may be changed to increase
storage capacity
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The nature of technology
• What is technology? What are its properties and
principles? Where does it come from and how does it
evolve?
– These questions are addressed by W Brian Arthur in his
book on The Nature of Technology (Arthur, 2009)
• Artefacts* are made up of combinable elements
– In engineered artefacts, these elements are technologies
– All technologies are combinations of elements that are
themselves technologies
* Artefacts are artificial things, designed and made by people to support our lives, societies and cultures
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The nature of technology
• All technologies exploit some natural effect or phenomenon,
usually several
– For example, flow of electrons in a semi-conductor, enthalpy in high-
pressure steam
• Once new technologies exist, they become potential building
blocks for further new technologies
– For example, electric motors and lithium-ion batteries originally made
for electronic devices can be used in cars
• Technologies evolve through combinatorial evolution (a different
mechanism from Darwinian)
– For example, cars have evolved with the addition of air conditioning,
radios, tape and CD players, electric locking and windows, etc.
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The nature of technology
– In phone technology, different elements are combined and
recombined in different ways, and new capabilities are added

An example of
combinatorial
evolution (Majumder
and Deen, 2019)

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The nature of technology
• Technologies develop by:
– Changing their interior parts and swapping in
better ones that improve their performance
• For example, the electric car has substituted an
electric motor for an internal combustion engine
– Adding additional technologies, for example,
to eliminate undesirable effects, or to improve
performance or control of the artefact
• In time, technologies may be replaced by
new technologies that meet the same needs in
more effective or efficient ways
– For example, public telephones are replaced by
cell phones
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Technology-driven versus demand-driven innovation
• In technology-driven
innovation, innovation is driven
by the potentialities of newly
discovered natural phenomena
or technological combinations
– When lasers were invented in
1960, they were called "a
solution looking for a problem”

• In demand-driven innovation,
innovation is driven in response
to need, user requirements, or a Applications of lasers
problem to be addressed
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Summary
• Design is at the interface between science, production, management and
art
• The key to successful design seems to be the effective management of the
dual exploration of both the 'problem space' and the 'solution space’.
• Decisions made in the conceptual design phase cost very little in terms of
the overall product cost but have a major effect on the cost of the product
• Design should be conducted to develop quality cost-competitive products
in the shortest time possible
• Technologies are assembled from parts or groups of parts to meet their
purpose
• Novel technologies originate from the harnessing of natural phenomena,
and through the combination and re-combination of existing technologies in
a process of combinatorial evolution
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 Thank You

Comments and questions to:

Teams, discussion forum, or
Ashraf.Afifi@bristol.ac.uk

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