- #1
- 5,584
- 24
Design is the heart of engineering work. In fact, ask a practicing engineer and s/he will most likely tell you that "Engineering is design!".
ABET defines engineering design as follows:
"Engineering design is the process of devising a system, component, or process to meet desired needs. It is a decision-making process (often iterative), in which the basic science and mathematics and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation. The engineering design component of a curriculum must include most of the following features: development of student creativity, use of open-ended problems, development and use of modern design theory and methodology, formulation of design problem statements and specification, consideration of alternative solutions, feasibility considerations, production processes, concurrent engineering design, and detailed system description. Further it is essential to include a variety of realistic constraints, such as economic factors, safety, reliability, aesthetics, ethics and social impact."
This definition is put into practice via a Design Process.
The Design Process is the engineer's version of the Scientific Method. It is broken into 10 steps, as follows:
The Design Process
1. Identification of a Need
2. Problem Definition
3. Information search
4. Constraints
5. Criteria
6. Alternative Solutions
7. Analysis
8. Decision
9. Specification
10. Communication
Although I have presented the Design Process as a list, it should not be thought that it is linear in nature. Very much to the contrary, Design is nonlinear and iterative. That is, one may, in the process of examining one's chosen solution (Specification--Step 9), determine that the solution is not feasible after all. In that case, one may have to go back to looking at some of the other candidate solutions (Alternative Solutions--Step 6). Furthermore, one could always find oneself going back to search for more information on a given problem (Information search--Step 3).
Stay tuned, and I'll go into detail on each of the 10 steps...
ABET defines engineering design as follows:
"Engineering design is the process of devising a system, component, or process to meet desired needs. It is a decision-making process (often iterative), in which the basic science and mathematics and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation. The engineering design component of a curriculum must include most of the following features: development of student creativity, use of open-ended problems, development and use of modern design theory and methodology, formulation of design problem statements and specification, consideration of alternative solutions, feasibility considerations, production processes, concurrent engineering design, and detailed system description. Further it is essential to include a variety of realistic constraints, such as economic factors, safety, reliability, aesthetics, ethics and social impact."
This definition is put into practice via a Design Process.
The Design Process is the engineer's version of the Scientific Method. It is broken into 10 steps, as follows:
The Design Process
1. Identification of a Need
2. Problem Definition
3. Information search
4. Constraints
5. Criteria
6. Alternative Solutions
7. Analysis
8. Decision
9. Specification
10. Communication
Although I have presented the Design Process as a list, it should not be thought that it is linear in nature. Very much to the contrary, Design is nonlinear and iterative. That is, one may, in the process of examining one's chosen solution (Specification--Step 9), determine that the solution is not feasible after all. In that case, one may have to go back to looking at some of the other candidate solutions (Alternative Solutions--Step 6). Furthermore, one could always find oneself going back to search for more information on a given problem (Information search--Step 3).
Stay tuned, and I'll go into detail on each of the 10 steps...