Engineering Design Process

The design process is a method used to solve problems. The steps resemble the scientific method, which you should be familiar with. Typically you will see six to nine steps in the design process. In class we follow the following steps:

  1. Define the problem
  2. Research the problem
  3. Brainstorm possible solutions
  4. Select the best solution
  5. Create the solution
  6. Test the solution
  7. Evaluate the results
  8. Communicate results
  9. Redesign, rebuild, or adjust as needed

This is a cycle. Even though nothing is ever perfect, you can always make improvements. To the right is a visual representation of the design process.

The videos below show some companies that design and manufacture products. They should help you appreciate this process more than just reading about it. Also, try it out at Edheads.org's Design a Cell Phone challenge.

Quirky

This video shows a entirely new approach to the design and manufacture of products and is worth watching. This class focuses on design. Quirky is a company that you can submit ideas for inventions, they will review the ideas, hold a vote, and potentially make your product. If your idea is chosen and manufactured, you will receive a percentage of the profit from your idea. Do you have any ideas worth submitting?

IDEO

We will be using the design process extensively in class. In this clip from ABC's Nightline you will see the design process in action. The video is a bit old (1999), but the process has not changed. This is a great look at the benefits of a diverse team, having time constraints, as well as the steps of the design process.

The first step of the design process is to define the problem. Nightline gives the IDEO team the challenge to recreate the shopping cart.

The second step is to research the problem. The team looks up facts about shopping carts, analyzes one, and goes out to stores and talks to people and observes people using shopping carts.

The third step is to brainstorm ideas. When the group reassembles after their research, they share what they learned and then start brainstorming ideas. The group is divided and each team makes a "mock-up" of what they feel is an improved cart design.

The fourth step is to select the best idea. For this step, each team explain their design. After that the team takes the best ideas from each cart and put them together into one design.

The fifth step is to make the product. The companies engineers spend one day creating the final design. After that engineer technicians and production workers spend the next day completing the design.

The sixth step is to test the design. After the team unveils the design, they take it out to a grocery store and try it out. Overall, the new design works very well. As with any design, there are still some improvements that could be made. Typically, in the design process you would take the information gathered from testing, evaluate it, then redesign and retest the new design. This creates a cycle that is only broken by time or financial constraints. In the video the team was given five days to complete the challenge, so after testing the new design, the challenge is over and they did not make revisions or "iterations".

This video is a newer clip from 60 Minutes interviewing David Kelly, the founder if IDEO.