I immediately realized that decomposition could be translated into other aspects of life. It became an essential part of how I view and approach any problem.
All tagged Design Process
Why Study the Design Process?
Why would you undertake a deep study of engineering design, or the design process, when you could go about design on your own and learn from your own experience? There is value to be gained from studying design, and I want to add my own take on why studying design is an important complement to hands-on experience.
Design Thinking Part 3: Design Thinking as a Mindset
This part of the Design Thinking series describes the mindset of expert designers. The article argues that the mindset of Design Thinking is enabling and freeing because it represents the beliefs that the designer uses to choose good design actions at appropriate times given the unique characteristics of the problem being solved.
Haste Makes Waste, But Not Always
It can be extremely difficult to know how much time to spend on a particular design task. Do it too quickly and you might waste time and money. Do it too slowly and stakeholders will conclude that progress has stopped. This article gives eight things to practice as you learn to strike a good balance between spending too much versus too little time reaching development milestones.
Color Blindness in Design
In your design and communication, be aware of the fact that many people have some degree of color blindness. This can potentially affect design features, design outcomes, and evaluation processes. Be aware and don’t disenfranchise up to 8% of your customers.
How to Get the Most Out of an Evaluation Matrix
Evaluation matrices are one of the most misused, misunderstood, tools of product development. However, a simple shift in the way we think about them can help us all get the most out of evaluation matrices.
Embracing Failure: Your Design Mentor
Everyone needs a mentor and maybe more than one. One of your mentors might be called Mary, Bob, or Jim. But at least one of your mentors should be called “Failure.”
How to Ideate as a Team
Almost all product development is done in a team setting, owing largely to the strongly held belief that the collective thinking of a group outperforms that of “the lone genius."
Making Products That Don’t Suck
Pixar has had 14 straight number one releases. How do they do it? How do they go ‘from suck to not-suck’?
A Baseball Conspiracy?
Baseball has always had a culture of data collection and analysis – called sabermetrics. It is amazing in and of itself that someone can throw a baseball over 100 mph, but what makes it even more interesting is that we know the exact day, pitch number, windspeed, ambient temperature that Jordan Hicks threw a ball 104.2 mph earlier this year.
The Pastry Chef Who Teaches Engineers
She doesn’t know it, but Bon Appétit pastry chef Claire Saffitz has taught me and my students what I wish all engineers could know and practice. She’s taught us how to approach design problems with the right skill and attitude.
Designing an American Ninja Warrior Obstacle with Vague Requirements
American Ninja Warrior is a TV game show testing athletes who excel in physical abilities. Each year they invite the public to compete in designing new obstacles. These are our thoughts on what would make a good design.
TRIZ
Explore TRIZ, an inventive way of problem solving invented by Genrich Altshuller.
The Hype Cycle
The Hype Cycle is a high-level model of the trajectory many technologies experience before full adoption by a group, an organization, or society. It hasn't been demonstrated to exist scientifically but it can be useful as an abstract tool to discuss the perceived progress of technology.
Design for Mongolia
One can learn a lot from designing a yurt or `ger’ for Mongolia. Find out which lessons Ivy found most important.
The Wright Brothers and the Airplane - Five Attributes of Great Engineering Design
The Wright Brothers weren’t just in the right place at the right time - they deserved to be the first to fly by practicing key attributes.
The Design Method that Perfectly Describes Oreo’s Strategy
SCAMPER, an acronym for 7 ways to change a product or a concept to create derivatives.
Always Have a Back-up Solution
Many of the things we design are not going to work the way we thought they would at first. There are just too many unknowns until we try it. In anticipation of this, great designers always have a back-up solution.
20 Questions of Product Development
The fundamental goal of product development is to evolve the product from an abstract idea to a specific manufacturable design.