Design

• Design is an activity that recognizes the goals or purposes of products or systems.
• Design is an activity that shapes its objects - creates their forms - in accordance with the goals or purposes of those objects.
• Design is an activity that evaluates and determines the forms of its objects and makes their contents universally comprehensible.
• The product design process transforms abstract customer demands into specific product drawings.
• The product design process is a process of function allocation that identifies product purposes - such as functions - and allocates them to a structural product.
• The product design process manipulates information creatively.
• The product design process is a decision-making process.

Dean and Unal (1992) maintain that designing is defining and that function analysis and quality function deployment are premiere tools for defining. Jacobson, Christerson, Jonsson, and Overgaard (1992) portray design as an evolution from a low dimensional abstract model to higher dimensional concrete models.

There seem to be two extremes to the design process. Stauffer and Slaughterbeck-Hyde (1989) portray the the use of constraints to narrow the design space to the final solution. This seems to be the design satisficing process typically used in the U.S.A. Taguchi (1986) portrays the target based design optimization process developed in Japan to design quality into the product. Most design processes seem to use both the contraint and target concepts to some degree, although, they may be biased heavily to one extreme or the other. What is the best mix for the future? Time will tell. Multidisciplinary optimization is a test bed for that determination.

When we design, we design a system to satisfy a set of purposes. The typical system contains hardware, software, people, processes, purpose, organization, and behavior. When life is involved in the system to be designed, there are specific subsystems which must be considered (Miller, 1978). The associated considerations, such as safety, become a part of the set of purposes. The set of the purposes of the system is often called the requirements. The net effect is that we must design the system holistically and we must design the system for many purposes.

Given the above thoughts and almost 40 years of designing, I submit that, in the general sense, design is the definition of form to satisfy desire. That is why I also suggest that comprehensive QFD, implemented under total quality control, is the current process which most exemplifies the basic function of design.

All students of and teachers of engineering design should have read Jones (1981), Hollins and Pugh (1990), Pugh (1991) and Pugh (1996). Bralla (1996) addresses a number of things we now understand we must design for. Norman (1988) provides a refreshing perspective on user centered design.

My latest thoughts on design are here.

References

• Akiyama, K. (1991). Function Analysis: Systematic Improvement of Quality and Performance, Productivity Press Inc., Cambridge MA.
• Bralla, J. G. (1996). Design for eXcellence, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, USA.
• Dean, E. B. and R. Unal (1992). "Elements of Designing for Cost," presented at the AIAA 1992 Aerospace Design Conference, Irvine CA, 3-6 February, AIAA-92-1057.
• Hollins, B. and S. Pugh (1990). Successful Product Design: What to Do and When, Butterworths, London, England.
• Jacobson, I. , M. Christerson, P. Jonsson, and G. Overgaard (1992). Object-Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Wokingham, England.
• Jones, J. C. (1981). Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures, John Wiley & Sons, New York NY.
• Miller, J. G. (1978). Living Systems, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York NY.
• Norman, D. A. (1988). The Design of Everyday Things, Currency Doubleday, New York, NY, USA.
• Pugh, S. (1991). Total Design: Integrated Methods for Successful Product Engineering, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Wokingham, England.
• Pugh, S. (1996). Creating Innovative Products Using Total Design: The Living Legacy of Stuart Pugh, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA, USA.
• Stauffer, L. A. and R. A. Slaughterbeck-Hyde (1989). "The Nature of Constraints and their Effect on Quality and Satisficing," in Elmaraghy, W. H., W. P. Seering, and D. G. Ullman, ed., Design Theory and Methodology - DTM '89, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York NY.
• Taguchi, G. (1986). Introduction to Quality Engineering: Designing Quality into Products and Processes, Asian Productivity Organization, American Supplier Institute, Dearborn MI.

Bibliographies

Design Bibliography

Living Systems Theory and Design Bibliography

Surfing the Web

Centre for Design Research at Stanford University

Center for Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D)

Centre for Design at RMIT

CMU Engineering Design Research Center

CMU n-dim Project

Customer Oriented Design Methods

Clemson University Design Methodology Group

Decision-Based Design Open Workshop

Design Theories and Studies

Engineering Design at The University of Virginia

Functional Design

Newcastle EPSRC Engineering Design Center

Systems Realization Laboratory

Virtual Library: Design

System Technologies | Genopersistation | Use