DESIGN PARADIGM

BY B.BALASUBRAMANIAN REG.NO:910012408003 M.E.-ENGINEERING DESIGN

What is Design Paradigm ?

Design Paradigm presents a new approach to solving design problems and thinking about the ways things work. It is a powerful tool for innovation and creative work. Par-a-digm for Greek paradeigma to show side-byside (metaphor) The term Design paradigm is used within the design professions, including architecture industrial design and engineering design, to indicate an archetypal solution.

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It teaches us to think differently. Nature is the greatest teacher in the design. Designers without having enough exposure and observation of nature would leads to excellent craftsmen but would fail to make innovative solutions. Natures Paradigms are the benchmark of inspirations that mankind has tried to used as tool for innovations.

Eg: Socket
Socket is a combination of two units ball & socket joints that animals have in their anatomy. The B&S Paradigm essentially allows things to rotate around an axis without coming out of the position that has the rotational dynamism. It also helps joining two separate parts together.

Define Problem
What is the essence of the problem? Where is the essence of the prior solution (if any)? Where did the prior solution fail? If it did not fail, how can the prior solution are improved upon? What other ways might there be to do things? Are there other problems similar to this one? What form does this solution imply? What other forms or basic approaches might work as well?

How do we recognize Design Paradigm?

Design Paradigms are found all around us, many yet waiting to be discovered. It is the discovering of a fundamental truth about the way things work. The paradigm has given us a new way to categorize things we encounter and find a new approach to formulating new ideas.

Visual and Functional Relationship

Design Paradigms function as metaphors, used as basis for visual and functional analogies. Metaphor is the bridge between what we know and what we wish to know. The visual images make things to understand easier. They give us handle on how to think of and talk about the ways that Things operate How they change, and How objects relate to others

Metaphor
Metaphor play important role in our thinking and speaking that are parallel to how we use paradigms in the design process. Metaphor is used in explaining something we understand to someone else. Metaphor is a tool we use to try to understand things that are not yet familiar to us. It is a bridge spanning gaps in our abilities, collapsing time, distance and other barriers

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Metaphor can be applied in introducing new design concepts, new products, and in new technologies Commonly today we compare with the human mind and computer hardware, storage of information and data Horse-driven carriage- horse-powered automobile

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The prime difference between paradigms and metaphors is that with paradigms, the association between domains is visual and functional rather than verbal. Application of both metaphor and paradigm requires that two domains be linked, usually the familiar and the unfamiliar, and that these two domains be different.

Biomimicry
Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. I think of it as "innovation inspired by nature."

Eg: Velcro
The products inventor George de Mestral stumbled upon the idea by observing how burrs stuck to his dogs fur and his clothing. By mimicking the small hooks of the burrs, he was able to develop the product we now know as Velcro.

Eg: Vibram Shoes

The Science Daily (Jan. 29, 2008) reports A new antisliding adhesive developed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, may be the closest man-made material yet to mimic the remarkable gecko (lizard) toe hairs.

Conclusion
It is important to examine each products functioning carefully and isolate the basic paradigms that are inbuilt in the product or system. It enriches the innovative ideas for the further innovations. It has attempted to build an understanding and realization of natures role in design profession. The anvil of natures rich resource can lead to innovative design solution. It is imperative to admit that there are millions of other paradigms yet to discover.