3.

Specify Requirements
• Design requirements state the important characteristics that your
solution must meet to succeed.
• What’s the best ways to identify the design requirements?
• Analyze the concrete example of a similar, existing product, noting each of its
key features.
• But how to analyze?
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• When you start to identify your design requirements, you already
know what problem you are trying to solve.
• But what does "solving" your problem really mean?
• Your design requirements are the specific needs that must be met in order to
call your design a solution.
• For a physical product, your problem is likely making a task possible or
easier for a user to complete.
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• An example is a pair of crutches. The problem statement is: 
• People need a way to walk while using only one foot, because they still need
to be able to get around when one of their feet or legs is injured.
• From the problem statement, you can
• start asking the right questions to create a list of design requirements.
• Pull the major needs of your solution from your problem statement. 
Example: The Major Needs of a pair of crutches are that they help
the user to:
• Walk while using only one foot
• Get around and mobilize
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• Few questions about analyzing physical product:
• What are absolutely essential to satisfy this need?
• What are physical requirements/limits?
• What are conceptual requirements/limits of the product?
• Do other products exist similar to your future design?
• Do you future product will have to compete with the other products?
• Will you include any features that are not present in the competing product?
What are they?
• How many requirements should you have?
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• For each need, ask yourself: "What is absolutely essential to satisfy
this need?"
• Right now, do not brainstorm. Instead, figure out what MUST happen
to meet the need in your future solution.
• Your answers to these questions are your first design requirements.
(Note: if you can remove your answer to the question and still meet
the need, then your answer is not a design requirement.)
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• The "Needs" table illustrates how to find the first design requirements
for the crutches example. 

What is Essential to Meet the Need

Major Needs from Step 1 (Possible Design Requirements)

Allow the user to walk while using only one

foot •A way for the user to balance

Help the user to get around •Light enough to carry

•Small enough to transport
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• What are the physical requirements/limits of the product you are
designing? The answers to this question are your next design
requirements. 

Example: What are the physical requirements/limits of a pair of

crutches?
• Less than 2 pounds
• Adjustable between 4 feet and 6 feet tall
• Able to hold up to 200 pounds of weight
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• What are the conceptual requirements/limits of the product you are
designing?
• These are requirements that are not related to the physical nature of
the product, but still must be met in order to make your solution
successful. Examples often include cost and the timeline of the project. 

Example: What are the conceptual requirements/limits of a pair of

crutches?
• The crutches must cost less than $30.00.
• The new design must be available in the next six months.
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• What other products exist that serve a similar function to solving your
problem? 

Example: Products similar to crutches:

• Other crutches on the market
• Wheel chairs
• Leg braces
• Examine these products. If possible, obtain the products themselves and
take them apart. Otherwise, research everything you can about the
products.
• Identify every individual piece of the product in addition to any features of
the product.
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• In your design notebook, draw a vertical line down the middle of the
page. On the left, write down all of the component parts and
features that you see. On the right, write down the purpose for each
component or feature. Why is it present? See Figure 1 for an example
related to crutches.
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product

• Look at the right side of your table. Which functions listed here will your product
need to fulfill?
• Circle these functions, and look at the feature on the left for each.
• Is the feature absolutely essential in meeting the need on the right?
• If yes, then this is a design requirement, and you should circle it.
• If it is not, it is a possibility that could contribute to your design, but not a requirement.
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• Is the product that you are designing going to have to compete with
the other products?
• If yes, then look more closely at the features on the left side of your table.
• If you feel that your design needs to include the feature in order to
keep up with current products, then that feature becomes another
design requirement.
3.1 How to Analyze a Physical Product
• Will you include any features that are not present in the competing
product? What are they?
• If they are features that you consider to be "must haves" in order to
make your design successful, then they can be considered your final,
additional design requirements.
3.2 How Many Design Requirements?
• How many requirements should you have?
• That's a really good question without a good answer. You should have neither too many
nor too few.
• What is "too many" depends on the product.
• An airliner might have thousands of design requirements, and that could be just right.
• For a university project, two or three, or maybe five design requirements are
appropriate.
• The reality is that experience is very important in deciding how many design
requirements are important. 
• If you have too many design requirements, it can become very difficult to
actually design and build a product.
3.2 How Many Design Requirements?
• Why might too few design requirements be a problem?
• If you have too few requirements, you might get a result that you don't really
want.
• Let's say that you do not specify a cost requirement. You might end up
designing something that costs many times more than what people
would be willing to pay for it. Your design would be a failure. So, don't
be a slacker on your design requirements.
Over • if it has too many requirements
Constrained Design
Under • one with too few requirements 
Constrained Design
4. Brainstorm Solutions Examining
existing
solutions

• There are always many good

possibilities/possible solutions for
solving design problems.
• If you focus on just one before Sketching Creating
looking at the alternatives, it is and Brainstorming and using
doodling analogies
almost certain that you are
overlooking a better solution.
• Good designers try to generate as
many possible solutions as they can
and they do this by ideation (the Conducting
formation of ideas or concepts). brainstorming
sessions
5. Choose the Best Solution
Robustness
• Ask, Whether each possible
solution meets your design Safety Aesthetics
requirements?
• Some solutions probably meet Universal
more requirements than others.
• Reject solutions that do not meet
Skill
Design
the requirements. required Criteria  Cost

• Good designers consider

the Universal Design
Criteria when choosing which Time Resources
possible solution to implement.
 5. Choose
the Best
Solution
• It helps to
compare
solutions in
a decision matrix
—a chart with
the requirements
and criteria on
one axis and the
different
solutions on the
other. 
5. Choose the Best Solution
• If your requirements and solutions are relatively simple, you can
sometimes just list the pros and cons for each solution. Pros are good
things about a solution and cons are bad things.
Pros Cons

Robustnes
s

Safety
Cost
6. Develop the Solution
Drawings
• Development involves the
refinement and improvement of a
solution, and it continues throughout
the design process, often even after a
product ships to customers. Methods of
• The goals of development work are Analysis Development
Work
Modeling

to:
• Make it work!
• Reduce risk.
• Optimize success.
Prototypin
g
6. Develop the Solution
• Drawing: Since the beginning of time,
drawings have been a way to share ideas
with others.
• Being able to describe your idea verbally is
important, but drawings are what allow you
to show other people what's in your
imagination.
• Words can only translate an idea to
someone else's mind—and that allows for a
new interpretation of what that idea may
look like.
• You don't want your ideas to get lost in
translation!
6. Develop the Solution
• Now, like many, you may think that you can't draw. But you don't have to be an artist to
be able to draw.
• Although it might seem intimidating, drawing is all about starting with the basics, and
like anything else in life—practice, practice, practice!
• The purpose of design/engineering drawing is to communicate your ideas to other
people in the simplest form possible. Your drawings don't need to be elaborate or fancy.
They just need to get your ideas across to others through simple shapes and symbols.
• Start your drawing training by practicing the simplest of shapes. In your design notebook,
draw lines, curves, circles, rectangles, squares, triangles, etc.
• Don't just draw one of each shape—draw dozens! You will be amazed at how much
faster you get at drawing these simple shapes and symbols.
7. Build a Prototype
• Prototype
• an operating version of a solution.
• Often made with different materials
than the final version, and generally it is
not as polished.
• It is a key step in the development of a
final solution, allowing the designer to
test how the solution will work.
• It allow you to test how your solution
will work and even show the solution to
users for feedback.
7. Build a Prototype
• Creating prototypes
• may involve using readily available materials, construction kits, storyboards,
or other techniques that help you to create your solution quickly and with
little cost.
• Keep in mind that these are mockups of your final solution, not the
real thing!
8. Test and Redesign
Design
something
• The design process involves multiple
iterations and redesigns of your final
solution.
• At this point, you have created prototypes Design
Make
of your alternative solutions, tested those modification process is Test it

prototypes, and chosen your final design. Iterative

So you're probably thinking that your
project is finished!
• But in fact, you have yet to complete the
Find
final and most important phase of the problem

engineering design process—test and

redesign.
8. Test and Redesign
• Test and redesign requires you to go out and test your final design
with your users.
• Based on their feedback and their interaction with your solution, you
will redesign your solution to make it better.
• Repeat this process of testing, determining issues, fixing the issues,
and then retesting multiple times until your solution is as successful
as possible.
• Keep in mind that minor changes this late in the design process could
make or break your solution, so be sure to be thorough in your
testing!
9. Communicate Results
• To complete your project, communicate your results to others in a:
• Formal Project report
• Research paper
• Display Board
• Engineering Competition
• Professional engineers always do the same, thoroughly documenting
their solutions so that they can be manufactured and supported.
Components of a Formal Project Report
Bibliography
• “Engineering Design Project Guide.” Sciencebuddies.
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/engineering-de
sign-process-guide
(accessed March 02, 2020).
• K. G. Budinski, Engineers' guide to technical writing, ASM
International, 2001.