The Leaning Tower of Pisa, or simply the Tower of Pisa, attracts 5 million visitors every year. It certainly is a strange sight to behold as you walk through the city walls. Why does it lean?
Innovation, Sustainability, and Design for HVAC Systems
A lot of energy is needed to power the HVAC systems that keep people comfortable. Although not every building is actively cooled, buildings are responsible for 40% of all U.S. energy consumption and emissions, and space heating and cooling accounts for 53.1% of building energy usage. What can we do to make HVAC design more sustainable, and how can we be more sustainability conscious in our own design work?
Water, Water Bottles, and Why I Struggled Finding Water Bottle Stickers in Peru
Why was it so hard to find water bottle stickers in Peru? Why aren’t reusable water bottles popular in Peru, and why are they so popular in the United States? Read on to find answers to these pressing questions and change the way you think about drinking water.
I Can’t Look Away From the Design of Trash Cans!
Two more countries and many more garbage cans - which are indeed an interesting product. Every culture, every era, and every person has some interaction with garbage. How we dispose of our own trash in public spaces can teach us a thing or two about design.
Useful Acronyms and Abbreviations in Product Development
Professionals use abbreviations and acronyms all the time in their communication. Come up to speed on over 60 Product Development abbreviations defined in this article.
6 Tips for Being Successful in Graduate School
Starting a graduate program in mechanical engineering is very different from your undergraduate program. You will take fewer classes, but you will also now have a large part of your time devoted to independent research as you work to complete a thesis or dissertation. This article is meant to help you find successful strategies sooner in graduate school, so hopefully, you can get through your program more efficiently and enjoy it more.
Nuclear Power: Actuarial Versus Perceived Risks
Actuarial risks can be quantified or measured. Perceived risks are felt when the outcome of a risk is negative, catastrophic, or involuntary. Learn how this applies to public opinion of nuclear power and think about how this could apply to your design work.
Good Design: Garbage Cans In Brazil
I’m not usually fascinated with garbage cans… in fact, I’ve never been fascinated with garbage cans before. But the variety and diversity of garbage cans throughout the small city of Itacoatiara, on the banks of the Amazon river, was too great to ignore.
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.
Good Design: Trublue Belay Gate
How is a triangular piece of fabric keeping rock climbers safe at the gym? Read about what makes the Trublue Belay Gate a good design.
Eight Tips for Acing Your Internship
I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I started my internship, and I was very nervous, so I wanted to share with you eight tips to help you succeed in your own internship.
Not a Meme Article on the Design Process
This is NOT an April Fools’ Day meme article. Nothing could be further from the truth. Also, ignore the cat.
Everyone Can Teach You Something About Design: Lessons From the Amazon
As we sit on the shore of the Amazon River, watching the sun go down, we reflect on the time we have spent in Brazil and the things we learned. We learned about culture, the kindness of the people, the toll that 36 straight hours of travel takes on your body, and the dolphins that inhabit the river. One of the most important lessons we learned was that everyone can teach you something about design, and the importance of humility as a designer.
Getting a Patent the Hard Way
Good design jobs are fun and smart designers never stay more than 3 years on a program to avoid getting stuck in sustainment, which is fixing minor drawing and manufacturing issues down in the factory. That is of course, unless you are in law school, in which case, low stress sustainment is the way to go.
Good Design—The iPhone
The phone market in the United States is saturated with different brands of phones to meet the needs of consumers. However, one device seems to rule them all: the Apple iPhone.
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.
What is Systems Design? Part 2
This article continues the discussion on “systems design” and introduces the system design spectrum that is useful to understand where and why multiple people use the word “system” in multiple ways.
Three Unexpected Tips for Writing Better Technical Papers
After you have done good technical work such as discovering something new, or developing a new technology, your goal in a technical paper is to share those findings with other people. This is not as easy as it sounds. In this article, I share three tips for refining your technical writing that you won’t find anywhere else, but that I am sure will make your writing more readable and trustworthy.
Ski Design for the Olympics
When designing a ski for the Olympics, you should know the precise conditions in which that ski will be used and design for those use cases. If not, a sub-optimal ski design will keep you off the podium.
Restraint—a Key to Design Success
Studying the concept art from season one of the Mandalorian, as featured in Phil Szostak’s book The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian, is not only thrilling, but a testament to the power of practicing restraint in design.