- Current section: Introduction
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Design and designing
- 1.1 Design
- 1.2 Problems and solutions
- 1.3 What is good design and good designing?
- 1.4 Designing as model-making and model-using
- 1.5 Design and needs
- 1.6 Designing as heuristic problem-solving
- 1.7 Design as finding a good problem – solution pair
- 1.8 Design, creativity, invention and innovation
- 1.9 Design is …
- 2 Design and innovation 1: the plastic kettle
- 3 Models of the design process
- 4 Conceptual design
- 5 Concept to prototype
- 6 Design and innovation 3: the Brompton folding bicycle
- 7 Conclusions
- References
- Acknowledgements
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Design
This unit looks at the process of design – from assessing the...
This unit looks at the process of design – from assessing the complexity of design as an activity, to exposing the difficulty in making general conclusions about how designers work. You will be able to identify innovation in a wide variety of designed objects and evaluate the impact of this innovation.
Having studied this unit you should be able to:
- recognise that functional artefacts have had input from a designer, with greater and lesser degrees of engineering input.
- identify that engineering designers work within constraints of finance, materials properties, desired functionality, human factors, etc.;
- understand that design exploits models of the product being designed, whether those models are physical mock-ups, computer-based models, or mathematical models which explore an element of the product’s performance;
- understand that there is rarely a unique solution to any design problem. Part of the skill of a designer is in finding a problem–solution pair, and the best compromise;
- understand how models of the design process are formulated, and how they can be applied to understand the development of a particular product or product family;
- understand that models of the design process, while useful, cannot guarantee good design or provide a template by which all designs can be judged;
- understand that early choices about design can have large influences on the available final solutions.
- appreciate the steps required to move from a conceptual design to a functional product within a process of innovation;
- critically evaluate the success of a designed product, and suggest concepts for improvement where necessary;
- understand design-related terminology such as innovation, context, uncertainty and style;
- understand the concept of stiffness, and that the stiffness of a component can be altered by changing its dimensions or changing the material from which it is made;
- understand the concept of stress, and how it can be calculated simply from the force and the cross-sectional area;
- understand the concept of strain, and how to calculate it;
- understand the concept of Young’s modulus and how to calculate it. Be able to distinguish between Young’s modulus as a material’s property and stiffness as a component property;
- understand the principle of a merit index for comparing different materials, and be able to perform simple calculations of merit indices.
- Duration: 28 hours
- Published on: Wednesday 27th July 2011
- Level: Introductory
- Posted under: Design
Contents
Design
Introduction

This unit looks at the process of design – from assessing the complexity of design as an activity, to exposing the difficulty in making general conclusions about how designers work. You will be able to identify innovation in a wide variety of designed objects and evaluate the impact of this innovation.
This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course Engineering the future (T173). [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
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- Creative-Commons: The Open University is proud to release this free course under a Creative Commons licence. However, any third-party materials featured within it are used with permission and are not ours to give away. These materials are not subject to the Creative Commons licence. See terms and conditions. Full details can be found in the Acknowledgements section.
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