Design Paths

One main reason teaching engineering design is difficult is the number of permutations we can arrive at a design work. For a professional engineer or designer to see a design opportunity, the process he uses can be one shown in the diagram above. He sees opportunity from experience he has accumulated through talking to customers or clients. He then develops a product design, i.e., a basic design idea for a product or service, and then develops its engineering design, i.e., doing the detailed engineering works.

Another possibility is captured by the next diagram below.

The first step is the same as above: seeing the opportunity from his contacts. The second step though is detailed engineering works he does by refining a current design he has access to. To refine the current design, he may realize that he needs to come up with a new product idea, so that the product design comes after the engineering design works.

There are a total 6 permutations to the 3 steps that define the design process. Below are the remaining four.

When market opportunity step occurs in the middle, it requires the designer or the design engineer to test his initial design to a market, either real or proxy through surveys.

These six possibilities show that engineering design is not an isolated discipline. It requires us to acknowledge that all three play a role.

Can I Teach Engineering Design?

As I'm designing an engineering design course I'll teach in 2017 Spring term, I'm faced with the question "Can I teach engineering design?" It could be interpreted as whether I have a credential to teach engineering design, and the answer is yes. In fact, I think each and every engineering faculty members should be able to teach engineering design, depending on what we mean by "design". There are some of us who think that design means the ability to conceive a product and to draw it. This aspect is what I call the aesthetics of the design of a product. The conceiving and drawing parts attempt to improve the appearance of the product. We can learn this, but engineers are not natural in doing this.

Engineers are more natural in focusing on the functionality and optimality of the design of a product. Functionality has to do with what we use the product for. Lifting, pushing, picking, pulling, opening, separating are some of mechanical functions I can name. These functions can be analyzed mechanically using computer software or using mathematical equations. Optimality has to do with reconciling more than one function we have for the product. We want a cork opener that is safe, easy to use, light, and cheap. The four ideas: safe, easy to use, light, and cheap represent properties of the design that have to be optimized as the cork opener is used to open a wine bottle.

I think the aesthetics and engineering (functionality and optimality) of a design are two separate issues. Ideally, they are one. Yet as disciplines to study and teach, they cannot be taught at the same time. There are just too many things to worry about when they are combined into one.