Engineering Design & Design Thinking

We are surrounded by fascinating and innovative products around us. If we look closely we will notice that most of the products are either there to solve the problems of human beings (like they say Necessity is the Mother of Invention) or to make lives better & more comfortable. All these engineering products like smart phones, cars, high speed trains, jumbo jets, lightning fast internet and many-many more engineering solutions are outcome of good Engineering Design. Engineering Design process is a series of steps, not necessarily in linear order, that are followed to reach to a solution for a problem. Some of the steps of Engineering Design process are - identify a problem, carry out background research, brain storm, propose solution(s), build prototype(s), test & redesign etc. Unlike scientific methods of carrying out laboratory research experiments where well defined steps or rules are quite strictly followed, Engineering design process doesn’t necessarily follows linear approach. For example it may require jumping across steps back & forth, it may also require many improvisations during the design process etc. This is a reason that an expert designer who is well versed with the domain knowledge would naturally respond better to the engineering problem and his approach will be more flexible and intuitive, while on the other hand novice designer whose domain knowledge is based on facts & rules will follow a less flexible or more obvious approach.

Scientists all over the world researching on engineering design methodologies have proposed different techniques to train novice designers and one of the popular technique is Design Thinking, a solution based approach adopted worldwide. Design Thinking refers to creative strategies used in solving problems, and the first format approach to Design Thinking process was proposed by Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon in 1969.

Figure 1 - Stages of Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a step-wise process and comprises of five distinct stages as shown in Figure 1 and are discussed below:-

• Empathise
  In first stage designers attempt to gain an empathic understanding of the problem. They consult experts to search out the details of the problem by understanding the needs of people involved. Empathy allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world in order to gain insight into users and their needs.
• Define the Problem
  Information gathered during the Empathise stage is combined and refined to get to the core of the problem. In this stage all the observations and information are analysed to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centred manner. The define stage assists designers in establishing prominent features of the solution, functions to be performed by the solution etc.
• Ideate
  Designers collectively brainstorm to find the ideas that may help to solve the problem. Till this point designers are well aware of the requirements of the users. Hence on the foundations of solid grounds i.e. information gathered in the first stage and problem statement defined in the second stage it becomes easier for the designers to find multiple ideas that can be utilized to solve the problem. After generating multiple ideas best possible solution is finalized based upon the user's requirements as well as the observations made during the requirements analysis.
• Prototype and Testing
  Design team, during this stage develop a prototype based on the finalized solution. Prototype is shown to users and their feedback is obtained. During prototype testing design team try to find out shortcomings of the solution. Prototypes may be shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments, or in a small group of people outside the design team. This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to check if the prototype meet the specifications of problem statement. By the end of this stage, design team will have a better idea of the constraints within the product and its limitations. They will have a better & more informed perspective of how real users would behave, think, and feel when interacting with the end product.

By: Dr. Sapna Saxena, Associate Professor (CSE), Chitkara University, H.P.

References

1. www.sciencebuddies.org
2. www.wikipedia.org