All in Design Philosophy
Think of your favorite fictional characters. Who are they? Do they live in a world like ours or somewhere very different and far away? What do they look like? What do they like to do? Consider your relationship with these characters. Though they are not real, you are invested in their story.
Conceptual design is the early part of the design process, which is often envisioned with post-it covered walls, smart interdisciplinary teams, and concept sketching. Conceptual design is full of energy and optimism. Until it is not. In this article I give a few tips – centered on the ancient philosophy of yin and yang – that help me keep conceptual design full of energy and optimizing the whole time.
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.
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.
The ability to create, and to become better at creating, is implicit in the nature of the brain’s neural network. As one approaches the peak of efficient work and cerebral focus, creativity becomes a self-sustaining process: the flow of ideas morphs into a rapid current that carries the creator and maximizes both the pace of the work and the enjoyment that comes with it. We all seek to innovate in such a way, but how do we achieve this level of creation on a regular basis?
As someone who loves design of all kinds, it can be easy to get carried away and lose track of where I, as a mechanical engineer, fit in the design world. For me it is important to understand what makes mechanical design different than any other kind of design. Understanding this puts me in a better position to know how my specific training and design decisions can affect the world.
Lenses are useful to focus and bend light. In design, metaphorical lenses can likewise focus our attention and bend our design towards various essential factors.
Caveat Emptor… Who are you really designing for? Yourself? The Customer? The Customer’s Future?
We spend a larger portion of our lives in a vehicle than we realize. That doesn’t mean we can forget about design while traveling by car. The lessons for good design can still be found all over our roadways and transportation system. Keeping your eyes on the road can let your eyes see some good design features too.
Although design is largely concerned with the future and what we’ll design it to be, it’s valuable to look to the past for inspiration and to quickly learn what might have taken decades for our predecessors to learn.
Editors from the BYU Design Review recently sat down with Professor Nathan Johnson, an associate professor in The Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, with research areas in global sustainability and systems engineering. Check out a few short passages taken from the interview.
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.
Some great ideas come from Japan and Kansei Engineering is one of them. The principles of kansei can make us more sensitive to customers’ emotions and thus more proficient, design engineers.
Your primary job is to perform good design work, but a close second is to make it easy for other people to understand the work you’ve done. Neither of these is trivial, and neither should be underestimated.
Designing for the ordinary might sound boring but it may be just as important as designing for the extraordinary.
There are an infinite number of possible designs. How can designers choose the right combination of materials, geometries, and processes to achieve the best outcome?
The recently published book “Product Development: Principles and Tools for Creating Desirable and Transferable Designs” is a unique addition to design resources available to students and engineering professionals interested in evolving their design ideas from the early stages of opportunity development all the way through to production.
When gathering inspiration for your designs, consider doing so from nature. After all, nature is the perfect engineer.
To have any hope of success, the following three issues should be focused on simultaneously during and from the beginning of product development. Don’t leave them to chance and don’t ignore them.
Without ambiguity, there is no design freedom, no decision-making, and no design. Therefore, we should embrace ambiguity and consider it our job as designers to thrive in that environment.
