Technical product design

1.   Design Methods are no receipt for success. Design methods helps to structure your thinking and actions. A method is an abstract description of a possible structure that can be applied to one’s thinking and actions. They are not recipes that tell you exactly what to do.

2.       Designing is a way of thinking and acting that is aimed at understanding and intervening in the world around through the design of products that aim to satisfy people’s needs and wishes.

3.       Without creativity and intuition the design process will stop. You need new ideas or a tentative solutions. After that you are checking the quality of the design by theoretical simulation and/or practical experiments.

4.       In essence designing is an activity that is supposed to lead to new possibilities and the embodiment of those possibilities.

5.       What is product design?

• Product design is embedded in a larger process: product development.
• Product design cannot be deduced form the description of a problem, nor from a function or a performance specification.
• Products are designed and made because of their functions. The kernel of designing a product is reasoning from function to form and use. To design a product is to conceive  (bedenken, zich voorstellen wat)  of the use of the product and to find a suitable geometrical and physic-chemical form for then products and its parts.
• Each part is defined by its form. They have particular properties.
• Two types of properties. Intensive properties (density, weight- properties of the material). Extensive properties: intensive plus the form. Designers are particularly focussed on the extensive properties, as they most directly determine the functioning of the product. By choosing for a material, a designer sets many intensive properties all at once, both good and less desirable ones. The art of designing is to give the product such a geometrical form that it has the desired extensive properties, given the intensive ones.
• A product have particular properties irrespective of the purpose of people. Functions express what a product is for, its purpose. The purpose depends on the intensions, preferences e.d. of the user. The context of use counts as much as the product itself and therefore the designers should equally pay attention to both of them. Designing includes also the design of its use.
• Designers will first think up the form and its use as a possibility. In such a way that, if users act in accordance with the usage instructions, the intended function is realized: Synthesis. The transition from function to form and use depends largely on the creative abilities and the insight of the designer. Causal models indicate possible directions in which a solution can be found. (Compare design rules)
• When you have the form and its use you can in a ‘causal’ analysis if it will functions as expected. Much scientific information is available.
• Designers have to deal with a variety of interests and stakeholders. Product design, therefore, demands a multidisciplinary approach.

6.       Product innovation process.

• Buijs: strategy formulation (policy and strategy formulation), design brief formulations (idea finding), product development (strict development) and  product launch (realization). Othervexample: Circular Chaos: the Delft innovation model.
• First part of the innovation process is ‘product planning’: policy formulation and idea finding. You define the kind of product to design
• Select a promising idea and work out all the aspects of this idea: Integrated product development.
• Evaluate the quality? Adapt the idea or select a new idea. In this way you can work effective.

7.       The basic design cycle; an iterative and spiral-like development

• In essence design is a trial and error process that consists of a sequence of empirical cycles.
• Analysis: The function(s) of the product (not yet in detail). In the analysis phase the designer forms an idea of the problems around such a new product idea (problem analysis) and formulates the criteria that the solution should meet, first broadly and in later iterations more accurately and complete. It is part of the perception of the clients, designers and other stakeholders (performance specification or program of requirements).
• (Fish Trap Model: designer has to explore alternatives at three levels: structural concept (topological level),formal concept (typological level) and material concept (morphological level).
• Synthesis: the generation of a provisional design proposal. The synthesis step is the moment of externalization and description of an idea, in whatever form.
• Simulation: This is a deductive sub process. You form an image of the behaviour and the properties of the designed product by reasoning and/or testing models. Theoretical theories, etc can be used. Yet in practice you generalisations form experience. Simulation leads to ‘expectations’ about the actual properties.
• Evaluation: Is the establishing the ‘value’ or ‘quality’ of the provisional design. The expected properties are compared with the desired properties in the design specification.
• Decision: Decide to go on with an idea of try again with the idea or another idea. You gain insight in the true nature of the problem, may be you want to change the design specification.

8.       Engineering models of product design

8.1.    The design-in-making can be:

• Function structure: the representation of the intended behaviour. It is a important methodological tool. It provides an aid for thinking about the mode of action of a product, without enforcing premature decisions on its embodiment.
• Solution principle: this defines the working principle of mode of action/product of a part thereof. It is a combinations of the solution principles of all subfunctions.
• Embodied design: this is the design in the normal meaning of the word design. The step form the solution principle to the embodied design can be seen as a process of establishing increasingly accurate, and more numerous characteristics of the product in particular. Typical intermediate stages are the design concept and the preliminary design (or sketch design). Embodied design involves corrective cycles in which analysis, synthesis, simulation and evaluation constantly alternate and complement each other.. The design concept is continuously refined.

9.       Some comments on phase models

• The phases do not follow each other rigidly.
• It is not a problem solving model. In each phase the designer will go through the basic design cycle, often more than once.
• In each phase new alternative solutions can be though off. But you have to be careful to diverge too much. Or converge too much.
• In practise many design projects can do without inventing new technical principles, and start form known, proven, concepts.
• All phases ends with a decision point. The phase models urge a regular evaluation of the project: reject, do a step back or continue to the following phase.

10.   Al die verschillende rollen hebben een ding gemeen: het creatieve denken van de ontwerper staat centraal, en op welke manier hij met verschillende partners tot het eindresultaat is gekomen. De ontwerper is zo bezien een projectmanager, al is het er een die de werkvloer niet schuwt. In een steeds complexere samenleving, waarin we na moeten denken over steeds complexere problematiek, lijkt me dit geen slechte ontwikkeling.
Marit Overbeek schreef deze column -en sprak deze uit- ter gelegenheid van Vlagplantsessie ‘Wat is Design? Existentiële design-kwesties op de snijtafel’. Rotterdam, Arminius, 10 mei 2011

11.   In interaction with people, products obtain their meaning. This is why ViP (vision in product design) is interaction centred. Designers have to conceptualise a vision of the interaction, an image of the way the product is going to be viewed, used, understood, and experienced.