PROBLEM DEFINITION: DETAILING

CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS

In this chapter, we look at how we start on the tasks of problem definition, beginning with the
initial statement from the client.
We then present ways to organize all of the information found from our design inquiries, and
finally develop a revised problem statement, which is one of the outputs of our problem
definition

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

1. CLARIFYING THE INITIAL PROBLEM STATEMENT

• client sets out a problem to be solved, typically in a verbal problem statement

• contain errors, biases, and implied solutions.

• rewrite the initial problem statement

• Only then can we begin to understand and solve the real problem

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

2. FRAMING CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS

• design team may ask questions to client, stakeholders, potential users and experts.

• list ideas that they can then organize into some problem relevant structure

• The best outcome of this work is a list of attributes from which separate lists of
• objectives (i.e., features or behaviors),
• constraints (i.e., limits), and
• functions (i.e., things the design must do)
• means

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

Lists of Design Attributes and of Design Objectives

Design a new ladder for electricians or other maintenance and construction professionals working on conventional
job sites.
we ask:
• What features or behaviors would you like the ladder to have?
• What do you want this ladder to do?
• Are there already ladders on the market that have similar features?
• And while asking these three questions, we might also ask:
• What do you mean by that?
• How are you going to do that?
• Why do you want that?
• Are there things or circumstances you want us to avoid?
• develop a list of attributes for a safe ladder design.
• We can categorize the items in our list of attributes into objectives, constraints, functions, and means
Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC
List of attributes

• objective : a feature or behavior that the design

should have or exhibit
• constraint : a limit or restriction on the design’s
behaviors or attributes
• function : a specific thing a designed device or
system is expected to do.
• means : a way or method to make a function happen
(implementation)

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

3. REVISED PROBLEM STATEMENTS:
PUBLIC STATEMENTS OF THE DESIGN PROJECT

• formalize our new (and possibly evolving) understanding by drafting a revised problem statement that reflects
our fuller understanding of the design problem
• revised problem statement will often appear in public presentations and reports
• important communication tool for developing the team charter
• The team charter is an agreement between the team, their parent institution, and the client regarding what the
project is to do, including what is to be delivered
• A word of caution should be attached to the discussions with the client or the public surrounding the revised
problem statement

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

Defining a Design Process-: Setting Design Objectives

1. CLARIFYING A CLIENT’S OBJECTIVES

• prune the list of attributes
• go through thoughtful clustering of our questions in this way, we can develop a new list that we can represent
in an indented outline, with hierarchies of major headings and various levels of subheadings
• The indented outline of objectives is one way to represent the information contained in that list.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC
Representing Lists of Objectives in Objectives Trees

• indented outline can also be represented graphically in a hierarchy of boxes

• The graphical depiction of the objectives for the device or system is called objectives tree
• Each layer or row of objective boxes corresponds to a level of indentation in the outline
• The top-level goal in an objectives tree is the root node at the top of the tree
• Root node is decomposed into subobjectives at differing levels of importance or to include progressively
more detail.
• Thus, the tree reflects a hierarchical structure as it expands downward.
• An objectives tree also gives the tree some organizational strength and utility by clustering together related
subobjectives or similar ideas.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC
The Objectives Tree for the Juice Container Design

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

2. MEASUREMENT ISSUES IN ORDERING AND EVALUATING OBJECTIVES
• Engineers are used to measuring all sorts of things: beam lengths, surface areas, hole diameters, speeds,
temperatures, pressures, and so on.
• The ruler establishes a common basis for comparison.
• The important point here is that of having a ruler or scale with (1) a defined zero, and
• (2) a unit to define the markings scribed onto the ruler.
• In mathematical terms, these properties enable strong measurements that allow us to treat measured
mathematical variables
• Similarly, people say that they prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate, but not by how much. This is precisely
the problem with asking the client to set priorities because we are really asking for a subjective ranking of
their relative importance. The client may prefer portability over price in designing a new laptop computer, but
there is no meaningful way to say that “portability is five times more important than cost” because there is no
scale or ruler that defines both a zero and a unit with which to make such measurements.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

3. RANK ORDERING OBJECTIVES WITH PAIRWISE COMPARISON CHARTS

i) Individual’s Rank Orderings

• rank objectives that are on the same level in our objectives tree

• The pairwise comparison chart (PCC) is a tool for ordering the relative importance of objectives. It is based
on the assumption that we can order any two objectives taken as a pair.
• The PCC is a simple matrix that allows us to
• compare every objective with each remaining objective individually
• add total scores for each objective.

• The entries in each box of the chart are determined as binary choices
• Every entry is either a 1 or a 0, where 1 indicates that the row objective is preferred over the column
objective.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

A pairwise comparison chart (PCC) for a ladder design

The simple PCC process just described, which is also known as the Borda count, is a valid
way of ordering things, but its results should be taken as no more than a straightforward
rank ordering, or an ordering of place in line. The scores assembled do not constitute what we had
defined as strong measurement because there is no scale.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

ii) Aggregating Rank Orderings for a Group

• A group of clients or users (or a design team) collects individual votes to aggregate into a set of preferences
for the entire group
• Suppose a team of 12 people is asked to rank order three objectives: A, B, and C

• 1 preferred A>B> C 4 preferred B > C > A 4 preferred A > C > B 3 preferred C > B >A

The aggregate rank ordering of the three objectives is C > B > A

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

iii) Using Pairwise Comparisons Properly

• PCC approach should be applied in a constrained, topdown fashion

• objectives are compared only when at the same level on the objectives tree
• the higher-level objectives are compared and ranked before those at lower, more detailed levels
• for many design tasks, only top-level objectives need be so ranked.
• The numbers obtained with a PCC are subjective orderings of relative value. Therefore, we should not try to
make these numbers seem more important by doing further calculations with them.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

4. DEVELOPING METRICS TO MEASURE THE ACHIEVEMENT
OF OBJECTIVES

• Establishing Good Metrics for Objectives

• metric should actually measure the objective
• surrogate metrics applied when there are no obvious
measures appropriate to the objective
• determine the appropriate units
• be sure that the metric enables the correct scale or level of
precision
• assign points for the metric that corresponds to the scale or
range
• It is important that we measure the achievements of all of the
objectives of a design consistently, on the same ruler or scale
• A metric should be
• Repeatable
• understandable units of measure
• unambiguous interpretation

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

Eg: Establishing Metrics for the Juice Container

• Objective: Juice container should be environmentally benign.

• Units: Rating assessment of most environmentally desirable alternative from 0 (worst) to 100 (best).
• Metric: Assign points according to the following scale:
• Completely reusable: 100 points
• Material is recyclable: 90 points
• Material is easily disposable: 50 points
• Material is disposable with difficulty: 25 points
• Material is a hazardous waste: 0 points

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

PROBLEM DEFINITION: IDENTIFYING CONSTRAINTS What are the limits for this design problem?

1. IDENTIFYING AND SETTING THE CLIENT’S LIMITS

• Constraints are a limit or restriction on the design’s behaviors or attributes
• typically framed as a binary yes-or-no choice
• important to the design process because they limit the size of a design space
• we often use constraints as a kind of “checklist” to help us keep our list of possible designs to a reasonable length.

2. DISPLAYING AND USING CONSTRAINTS

• List
• add them to objectives trees (italics or a different font)

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC
PROBLEM DEFINITION: ESTABLISHING FUNCTIONS How do I express a design’s functions in
engineering terms?

1. ESTABLISHING FUNCTIONS

Functions: things that a designed device must do.

• Input Is Transformed into Output
• transforming an input into an output
• engineering functions involve the transformation or transfer or flow of energy, materials, or information
• information flow includes the transfer of data in any of several forms: tables and charts on paper, data
transmitted over the Internet or by wireless, and electrical or mechanical signals transmitted to sense or
measure behavior or control response

Expressing Functions
• use a verb–noun combination that best describes the most general case
• avoid tying a function to a particular solution
• categorize functions as being either basic or secondary functions
• Secondary functions maybe categorized further as either required or unwanted functions.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

2. FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS: TOOLS FOR ESTABLISHING FUNCTIONS
i) Black Boxes and Glass Boxes
• Black box is a graphic of the system or object being designed, with inputs shown entering the box on its left-
hand side and outputs leaving on the right. All of the known inputs and outputs should be specified, even
undesirable byproducts that result from unwanted secondary functions.
• The glass box exposes several new boxes within the original (black) box, each of which represents a
subfunction that must be performed to support the drill’s overall functionality

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

TOOLS FOR ESTABLISHING
FUNCTIONS
ii) Dissection or Reverse Engineering
• We reverse engineer a device or system that does some or all of what we want our design to do when we take
it apart: We dissect, deconstruct, or disassemble it.
• We do this to find out in detail just how it works so we can then apply what we learn to our own design
problem.
• This “visual” inspection produces the same functional analysis that we found with the black-to-glass box
analysis.
• we are trying to analyze both the functions of a device and how those functions are (and can be) implemented

• But there are often good reasons why we can’t use a particular device or design we’re dissecting
• that device or design was developed to meet the goals of a particular client and a target set of users, and they may have had different
concerns than we have
• we limit our creative possibilities—and we may well run into serious intellectual property and ethical issues

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

iii) Enumeration
• enumerate or list all of the functions that we can readily identify
• Excellent way to begin functional analysis
• It may be problematic for determining secondary functions
• Successful enumeration requires thoughtful questioning.
• Ask thoughtful questions and to properly use verb–noun pairs to
express each and every function of the designed object.
• What happens if there is no X?
• how it might be used and/or maintained over its life

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

iv) Function–Means Trees
• graphical representation of a design’s basic and secondary
functions. (what we must do to how we might do it)
• helps us sort out secondary functions in cases where
different means or implementations can lead to different
subfunctions
• The tree’s top level shows the basic function(s) to be met.
Each succeeding level alternates between showing:
• the means (in trapezoids) by which the primary
function(s) might be implemented,
• the secondary functions (in rectangles) necessitated
by those means

• It is not a substitute either for framing the problem or for

generating alternatives
• should not be used alone, that is, without using some of
the other tools described earlier

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

3. DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS: SPECIFYING FUNCTIONS,
FEATURES, AND BEHAVIOR

• Design specifications are presented in three forms that represent different ways of formalizing a design’s
functional performance and its features and behaviors for engineering analysis and design

• Prescriptive specifications specify values for attributes of design.

• Procedural specifications specify procedures for calculating attributes
• Performance specifications specify performance levels that a function must demonstrate to be successful.
• Interface performance specifications - if a system or device has to work with other systems or devices, then we must specify
how those systems interact

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

i) Attaching Numbers to Design Specifications

• We use specifications to scale functions

• We need a specification for every function our design must perform, and designs must meet each and every
specification
• utility plot - graphs the usefulness of an incremental or marginal gain in performance against the level of a
particular design variable

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

ii. Setting Performance Levels

• First identify design variables that reflect the functions that must be performed and the units in which those
variables are measured
• assume a standard or linearized S-curve
• establish the range of interest for each design variable by
• threshold below which no meaningful gains can be made
• saturation plateau above which no useful gains can be achieved
• range-of-interest zone that lies between the threshold and the plateau

iii. Interface Performance Specifications

• Used to detail how devices or systems must work together with other systems
• boundaries between subsystems must be clearly defined, and anything that crosses a boundary has to be
specified
• A black-to-glass box analysis can be helpful in developing interface requirements

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

iv). House of Quality: Accounting for the Customers’ Requirements

• ensure a design’s quality

• Quality is “fitness for use,” that is, quality is a measure of how well a product or service meets its
specifications and requirements
• One of the most important notions used by many designers is quality function deployment (QFD),
• QFD is expressed in a tool called the House of Quality (HoQ).
• A HoQ is a matrix that combines a lot of information about stakeholders, desirable characteristics of designed
products, current designs, performance measures, and trade-offs.
• it clearly shows a metaphorical house

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

HoQ
• Who refers to the stakeholders in the design process
• What entries correspond to the design’s desired attributes
• Now entries refer to existing products or designs that are
typically found during problem definition, and they are
used for benchmarking proposed designs.
• How elements refer to the metrics for objectives and the
specifications for functions
• How Much or Target are goals or targets for the What
entries.

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC

Pros and cons of HoQ

HoQ is useful for gathering and organizing

information, and for fostering discussions within a
design team and with stakeholders.

On the other hand, building a HoQ entails a lot of

time and effort

Athira S Nair, AP CSE, MEC