Visual thinking skills enables good sketching. Good sketching facilitates rapid design iteration. Good design emerges from significant iteration. Based on this logic, visual thinking skills are foundational to good design.
All in Design Methods
From Chaos to Clarity in the Design Process
It's the nature of design to be messy and complicated. Eventually what felt chaotic in design becomes clear. Making that transition from chaos to clarity is greatly facilitated by checking four things about your process. This article discusses those four things.
The Risky Business of Design
If skateboard legend Tony Hawk were a design engineer, what do you think his design process would be? We suspect he would not settle for the obvious. Choosing a final concept during the design process can be challenging and risky. Teams generate many ideas during the concept development phase, and it can be difficult to select the best one. On rare occasions, choosing two concepts and taking them further into the design process at the same time is better than just choosing one.
Learn to Sketch: Shading and Shadowing Cylinders
Until recently, how to shade and shadow cylindrical objects has been a mystery to me. I had known there should be areas on the surface shaded lighter and others darker, but I didn’t quite know where those should be. Understanding the physics and practicing the sketches in a detailed way (a few times) helped me lock in the core concepts. Now I can sketch them quickly without trouble. This article shares the physics and provides a step-by-step process for skill building.
Design Thinking Part 3: Design Thinking as a Mindset
This part of the Design Thinking series describes the mindset of expert designers. The article argues that the mindset of Design Thinking is enabling and freeing because it represents the beliefs that the designer uses to choose good design actions at appropriate times given the unique characteristics of the problem being solved.
Understanding the Impact of Products: An Introduction to the 11 Social Impact Categories
Every single product that has been made, is currently being made, or will be made has economic, environmental, and social impacts. How can we design to have better impacts and what are social impacts? Read on to find out.
Design Thinking Part 2: Design Thinking as a Step-by-Step Process
Design Thinking is not new. It’s been around for decades. The first attempt to turn it into a process was in 1969. Contemporary forms of that process still exist today, the most popular being the 5-step process introduced by the Stanford Design School in 2005. This article describes that process and other techniques that will help you try-out Design Thinking.
Design Thinking Part 1: Basic Concepts and Principles
Design Thinking is a powerful and popular topic, but it is also illusive and ill-defined. This article demystifies Design Thinking just enough so you can begin benefitting from what it offers. This is the first of a 5 part series on Design Thinking, where this first part provides basic definitions, view points, history, and Design Thinking exercises.
How Many Samples Do I Need? Determining Sample Size for Statistically Significant Results
Anyone who has designed anything -- whether that be a new medicine, a design method, or even a new recipe -- has faced the question: “Is this better than what I had before?” If you’re just deciding whether or not you like a new recipe, getting an answer is straightforward. If you are in an academic or industrial setting you must also answer an even more important question: “Can I prove that this is better?”
Who Is Your Customer?
The customer matters. Our job is to get the customer what they want. We must interact with, listen to, and observe the customer to identify and understand their needs. But the notion of customer is significantly more complicated and important than it seems. This article breaks down and lists out the types of customers to consider when designing any product.
Haste Makes Waste, But Not Always
It can be extremely difficult to know how much time to spend on a particular design task. Do it too quickly and you might waste time and money. Do it too slowly and stakeholders will conclude that progress has stopped. This article gives eight things to practice as you learn to strike a good balance between spending too much versus too little time reaching development milestones.
Verification Versus Validation
There are two general types of tests that can be done to observe the design’s strengths and weaknesses. They are called verification tests and validation tests. The differences between these tests can be confusing because the words seem and sound similar, and because some people use them interchangeably without thinking deeply about what they mean. This article describes the difference between them.
Using Your Camera in Product Development
You carry one with you, so you might as well get the most out of your camera, especially when it comes to product development.
The Peer Review Process and Why it Matters for Design
With attacks on the scientific community happening everyday, I thought it would be helpful for people to know more about the peer review process. Yes, the peer review process does have problems, but currently it is our best bet at getting to the facts. Find out why this matters to you as a designer.
A Good-Better-Best Framework for Design
The long term relationship between a design team and it’s client has everything to do with what the design team delivers and when. Setting clear expectations about the quality and completeness of the design work keeps both the design team and the client from changing the expectations without thoughtful discussions together. Simply articulating early in the development process, what good, better, and best solutions look like can make all the difference in what is delivered and in the long term relationship.
Design through Analogy
Metaphors, similes, parallels, allegories, symbols, and, of course, analogies are some of the tools designers, engineers, and scientists often use to communicate, discover, and develop their trade. Johannes Kepler was one of the foremost scientists to apply analogies to discover the design of our solar system. We should follow his example in our efforts.
Iteration: The most important concept in design
If you think your design will be “right/good/complete/perfect” after just one cycle of creation, you’ll be disappointed and frustrated. It won’t be right, it probably won’t even be good. If you accept that iteration is a normal, healthy, and expected part of the design process, your love for, and competency in, designing things will skyrocket.
Computer-Aided Design
When I was an engineering student I took three CAD classes, mostly because they were fun. When I was the director of engineering at ATL, CAD was at the center of all our detailed design work. It was indispensable to our engineering. When I became a professor, however, my appreciation for CAD slowly and unconsciously faded. Luckily, a new university assignment has put CAD back on my radar and my appreciation for it is greater than ever.
Getting the Most out of Digital Calipers
If your job involves product or part geometry, I believe you should own and use a pair of digital calipers. They are one of the most important measurement tools to access the details of the geometry you’re working with. Even if your job is purely theoretical, it can be helpful to simply use the calipers to visualize the size and scale of features you’re specifying or being asked to work with.
Two Dramatically Different Approaches to Design: From the Art of Innovation
While the book, The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly, is full of useful anecdotes, principles, and tips, there is one timeless principle that I wish more creative people knew and practiced – especially engineers. It’s related to seeking feedback.