Chapter 2

Design communication (prescriptive)

Document final design

Objective tree

Hierarchical lists of the client's objectives or goals for the design that branch out into tree-like structures. The objectives that designs must attain are clustered by sub objectives and then ordered by degrees of further detail, and the highest level of abstraction is the top-level design goal

Detailed design

Refine the choices made in the preliminary design, articulating the final choice in far greater detail, down to specific part types and dimensions

Iteration

Repeatedly apply a common method or technique at different points in a design process

Reverse engineering

Taking apart similar products to determine why a given product or device was designed the way it was

Communication

The designer communicates the final design to the client and to manufacturers or fabricators.

Generation

The designer generates or creates various design concepts

Least commitment

The general strategy for thinking about design (never marry your first design)

Functional analysis

Used to identify what a design must do

Literature review

A classic method of determining the state of the art and prior work in the field, enhances our understanding of the nature of potential users, the client, and the design problem

Synetic activity

A design team does this to uncover or develop analogies between one type of problem and other types of problems or phenomena

Conceptual design

A model's first phase, in which different concepts (schemes) are generated to achieve the client's objectives. Some argue that there should be two or more schemes produced since early commitment to a single design choice may be a mistake

Design communication

A post-processing phase that identifies the work done after detailed design to collect, organize, and present the final design and its fabrication specifications

Problem definition

A pre-processing stage that frames the problem by clarifying the client's original problem statement before conceptual design begins

Beta testing

Allow designers to expose design or implementation errors and to get feedback about their product before it reaches a larger market

Project scheduling

Assignment of tasks: linear responsibility chart (LRC) established, resources and tasks scheduled, budget defined

Formal design review

At specified intervals in the design process, where the current design is presented to users, clients, and other stakeholders.

Decomposition (divide and conquer)

Breaking down, subdividing, or decomposing larger problems or ideas into smaller subproblems or subideas

What questions should you ask of a client?

Clarification, establish the client's objectives, identify the constraints, establish functions, establish requirements, generate design alternatives. model, analyze design, test and evaluate, refine and optimization, reason for creation and cost, and document all steps

Problem definition (prescriptive)

Clarify objectives, establish metrics for objectives, identify constraints, revise client's problem statement

Project definition/scoping

Client's feasibility study (owner's study), orientation meeting (project kick-off), scope defined; budget and schedule limits set, team charter written

Internal feedback loop

Come during the design process, and in which the results of performing the test and evaluation task are fed back from the preliminary design phase to verify that the design performs as intended

External feedback loop

Comes after the design reaches its intended market, and in which user feedback then validates the design

Proof-of-concept testing

Crucial step along the path from conceptual design to detailed design, physical/computational testing involves establishing a formal means of determining whether or not the concept under consideration can reasonably be expected to meet the design requirements.

Conceptual design (prescriptive)

Establish functions, establish requirements (function specs), establish means for functions, generate design alternatives, refine and apply metrics to design alternatives, choose a design

Focus groups

Expensive way of allowing a design team to observe the response of appropriately selected users and others to potential designs

Three phases of the simplest descriptive model of the design process

Generation, evaluation, communication A different version is doing research, creating, and implementing a final design

Structured interview

Get info that combines the consistency of a survey with the flexibility of informal interviews, uses a previously defined set of questions that may or may not be made available to the interviewees.

Public hearings

In some design environments, laws or public policies require these for the purpose of exposing the design to public review and comment

Computer analysis

Involves the development of a computer-based model to describe the design

Preliminary design (prescriptive)

Model and analyze chosen design, test and evaluate chosen design

Prescriptive model of design

Prescribes what is done in each phase in terms of fifteen design tasks, in five phases. These five phases are problem definition, conceptual design, preliminary design, detailed design, and design communication

Project management process

Project definition/scoping, project framing, project scheduling, project tracking, evaluation and control

Project framing

Project team set, project tasks developed: work breakdown structure (WBS) established

Performance specification method

Provides support for the elaboration of the requirements that reflect, in engineering terms, how a design will function. The aim is to list solution independent attributes and performance specifications that specify the requirements of a design concept

Detailed design (prescriptive)

Refine and optimize chosen design, assign and fix design details

Evaluation

The designer tests the chosen design against metrics that reflect the client's objectives and against requirements that stipulate how the design must function

Preliminary design/embodiment of schemes

The second phase in the model of the design process. Here, proposed concepts are fleshed out of the abstract of the conceptual design.

Competitive products are benchmarked

Use similar products to try to evaluate how well these products perform certain functions

User surveys and questionnaires

Used in market research, focus on identifying user understanding of the problem space and user response to possible solutions

Morphological chart

Used to identify the ways or means that can be used to make the required function(s) happen, functions expressed as verb-noun action pairs, and the means are specific ways or devices for using or converting energy and for processing information and/or materials There is also a design space, an imaginary plane that we can use to generate, collect, identify, store and explore all of the potential design alternatives that might solve our design problems

Informal interviews

Very early in design project, when the team is still trying to define the problem sufficiently to plan an approach, and relatively easy to conduct, but can be disorganized

Prototype development

Very important means of determining whether or not a design can perform its required functions. It embodies the principal functional characteristics of the final design.

Pairwise comparison charts

Where we list the objectives as both rows and columns in a matrix or chart and then compare them on a pair-by-pair basis, proceeding in a row-by-row fashion

Simulation

Without being able to test a prototype, exercise an analytical, computer, or physical model of a proposed design to simulate its performance under a stated set of conditions

Project tracking, evaluation and control

Work and time and cost monitored, actual and planned work compared, trends analyzed, plans revised as needed