My Personal Design Process

Throughout the year, my personal engineering design process has been shaped by lectures, activities, projects, and presentations. Inspirational professors and guest speakers have made me think again and again about design work, and the various places it plays a role in the Engineering profession. This was then reinforced through Praxis studios and CIV102 labs, where we were given the tools to do our own design work. Finally, each project I have completed as an Engineering Science student has shaped the way I think about design.

Outlined below are the steps I think I use on my most successful design projects.

1. Problem Identification
a. There are two ways to start an engineering project: identifying or understanding the problem. In a course like Praxis, we have to find the problems ourselves. In CIV102, we are given a problem and we must build a bridge to go with that problem. Here it is a matter of understanding the problem. In either case, it is important to fully develop the problem and get a good grasp on what the end goal of the project is right from the beginning. Things can shape and change from here, but I believe have an end goal is an important part of the initial process.
b. Research is often required to fully understand certain aspects of the problem.

2. Requirements
a. This is the next phase of understanding the problem. The requirements shape the design space you have to work in. Requirements can be given by the client and written by the designer, and some of the initial requirements can be pushed back on. Research plays a large role in this step.

3. Initial Brainstorming
a. I believe the very first stage of brainstorming is one of the most important ones in the project. In the phase you let out all the crazy ideas that may or may not work, but you write them down anyways. Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that initially seem impossible. Even though they’ve encouraged us to not just sit down with a pen and paper in Praxis, I believe this is the method that I’m most comfortable with, and also the part that is the most fun. Because of this, I always include it early in the project.

4. Decomposition and more brainstorming
a. A functional decomposition is an important part of developing a solution. Breaking a problem into smaller parts can help you see how each part can be solved, or where it has been solved before. I like to brainstorm separately for each part of the larger problem. Lots of research for reference designs happens in this step.

5. Combine ideas
a. From the brainstorming in part 4, I look to see how the best ideas from each decomposed section can fit together. This is similar to methods used in the SCAMPER technique.

6. Readjusting requirements
a. Based on the potential solutions I come up with, requirements have to be checked over and sometimes modified. If they do need to be modified, research and justification is necessary.

7. Conceptual solution
a. Choose a solution from the ones above, based on the edited requirements. If there are no appropriate solutions, return to step 3.

8. Detailed solution
a. Elaborate on the design. Examine things such as safety, materials, manufacturing, user interfaces, durability, etc.

9. Presenting Results

Below is a diagram of these steps.