Engineering Design Process

EN 223 Research Project and Presentation

Lecture Outline
• What is the Engineering Design Process?
• The steps in Engineering Design Process
1. Define the Problem
2. Do Background Research
3. Specify Requirements
4. Brainstorm Solutions
5. Choose the Best Solution
6. Develop the Solution
7. Build a Prototype
8. Test and Redesign
9. Communicate Results
What is the Engineering Design Process?
• The Engineering design process:
• is a series of steps that engineers follow to come up with a solution to a
problem.
• Many times the solution involves designing a product (like a machine,
robot or computer code) that meets certain criteria and/or
accomplishes a certain task.
• This process is different from the steps of the Scientific Method,
which you may be more familiar with.
What is the Engineering Design Process?
• Scientific Method:
• If your project involves making observations and doing experiments, you
should probably follow the Scientific Method.
• Engineering Design Process:
• If your project involves designing, building, and testing something, you should
probably follow the Engineering Design Process.

Making observations
Scientific Method & Doing experiments,
proposing theory

Identifying problem,
Engineering Design Designing, Building &
Process and Testing Design
Scientific
Method
vs
Engineerin
g Method
What is the Engineering Design Process?
• Engineers do not always follow the Design
something
engineering design process steps in order,
one after another.
• It is very common to design something,
test it, find a problem, and then go back to Make Iterative Test it
modification
an earlier step to make a modification or Process
change to your design.
• This way of working is called iteration, and
it is likely that your process will do the Find problem
same!
Steps of the Engineering Design Process
1-Define the
Problem
9- 2-Do
Communicate Background
Results Research

8-Test and
Redesign
Engineering 3-Specify
Requirements
Design
Process
7-Build a 4-Brainstorm
Prototype Solutions

6-Develop the 5-Choose the

Solution Best Solution
Steps of the Engineering Design Process
1. Define the Problem
• Finding an idea for your engineering project
requires you to identify the needs of yourself, Create a list of all the

Find an idea for your

engineering project
another person, or a group of people. The act of things that annoy or
looking at the world around you to identify these bother the people around
needs is called need finding/problem you.
identification.
Record this bug list in
• To help you find an idea for your engineering your Design Notebook.
project:
• Create a list of all the things that annoy or bother the
Mind Map possible design
people around you.
problems, ideas, or areas
• Record this bug list in your Design Notebook. of interest to you.
• Mind Map possible design problems, ideas, or areas
of interest to you.
Steps of the Engineering Design Process
1. Define the Problem
• The engineering design process starts when you ask the following
questions about problems that you observe and that is calling
defining the problem,
What is the
problem or need?

Define the
Problem
Who has the
problem or need?
Why is it important
to solve?

• [Who] need(s) [what] because [why].

Steps of the Engineering Design Process
1. Define the Problem
• Once you have found an idea for your engineering project, describe
the problem by writing a Problem Statement. Your problem
statement must answer three questions:
• What is the problem or need?
• Who has the problem or need?
• Why is it important to solve?
• The format for writing a problem statement uses your answers to the
questions and follows these guidelines:
• Who need(s) what because why.
• _____ need(s) _________ because ________.
Steps of the Engineering Design Process
1. Define the Problem
• What is Design Notebook?
• The design process takes days, weeks, sometimes even months or years,
to complete and involves many different steps and phases along the way.
• If you recorded all of your work in different places, it would be almost
impossible to find important thoughts when you need to refresh your
memory.
• And, it would be difficult to gather all your work to present your final
solution.
• To avoid being disorganized, designers and engineers keep design
notebooks, where they record every detail of their projects along the way.
Steps of the Engineering Design Process
1. Define the Problem

What is Mind mapping?

• Mind Mapping refers to a
technique that designers and
engineers use to express and
generate ideas.
• It is a way to get all of the ideas in
your head down onto paper.
• There is no right or wrong way to
mind map.
• It is simply a visual representation
of the thoughts in your head, and
it often looks like organized chaos.
Steps of the Engineering Design Process
2. Do Background Research
• Learn from the experiences of others — this can help you find out
about existing solutions to similar problems, and avoid mistakes that
were made in the past.
• So, for an engineering design project, do background research in two
major areas:
Do Background
Research

Users or Existing
customers solutions
2.1 Background Research Plan
• Background research is especially important for engineering design projects, because you can
learn from the experience of others rather than blunder around and repeat their mistakes.
• To make a background research plan— a roadmap of the research questions you need to
answer -- follow these steps:
1. Identify questions to ask about your target user or customer.
2. Identify questions to ask about the products that already exist to solve the problem you
defined or a problem that is very similar.
3. Plan to research how your product will work and how to make it.
4. Network with other people with more experience than yourself: your mentors and teachers.
Ask them: "What should I study to better understand my engineering project?" and "What
area of science covers my project?" Better yet, ask even more specific questions.
Use this Background Research Plan Worksheet to help you develop your own plan.
2.2 Finding Information for Your Research
Paper
• How to find information?
• Find and read the general information contained in an encyclopedia,
dictionary, or textbook for each of your keywords.
• Use the bibliographies and sources in everything you read to find additional
sources of information.
• Search periodical indexes at your local library.
• Search the Internet to get information from an organization, society or online
database.
• Broaden your search by adding words to your search phrases in search
engines. Narrow your search by subtracting words from or simplifying your
search phrases.
• When you find information, evaluate if it is good information.
2.2 Finding Information for Your Research
Paper (Contd.)
How to evaluate if the information is good?
Good References Bad References
Come from a credible source Come from a source with poor credibility

Not too old Out of date

Not objective and fair, biased towards one

Not biased
point of view

Free of errors Prone to errors

Properly cite the original source of all Do not cite where the information came from
information

Easy for other people to find or obtain Difficult for others to obtain
2.3 Bibliography & References
• Make a list to keep track of ALL the books, magazines, and websites
you read as you follow your background research plan. Later this list of
sources will become your Bibliography.
• For every fact or picture in your research paper you should follow it
with a citation telling the reader where you found the information.
• Difference between Bibliography & References?
• A list of references contains only the sources that you specifically cite within
your paper or essay.
• A bibliography, on the other hand, can contain sources you read and which
readers might find valuable to know about even though you didn't specifically
cite them within the body of your writing. 
2.3 Bibliography & References
• A citation is just the name of the author and the date of the
publication placed in parentheses like this: (Author, date). This is
called a reference citation when using APA format and if IEEE format
is being used, citation is just number in square bracket i.e. [1], [5],
[20-23]
• Its purpose is to document a source briefly, clearly, and accurately.
2.3 Bibliography
Collect this information for each
printed source:
•author name
•title of the publication (and the title of the
article if it's a magazine or encyclopedia)
•date of publication
•the place of publication of a book
•the publishing company of a book
•the volume number of a magazine or printed
encyclopedia
•the page number(s)
Collect this information for each Web
Site:
•author and editor names (if available)
•title of the page (if available)
•the company or organization who posted the
webpage
•the Web address for the page (called a URL)
•the last date you looked at the page