Learning outcomes

After studying this course, 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.