This day's class was an interesting one. Not a lot of notes but more of an example of conceptual design and its relationship to customer requirements. Customers usually give their requirement in an intangible form that cannot be readily measured or quantified. A good designer can translate these requirements to a more measurable form and can alter properties, size weight, manufacturing process, or aesthetics to match the customers needs.
The example used in today's class draws on the idea of the customers linguistic nature to use words that are immeasurable quantitatively, that to be translated by engineers to match what they want.
Find out more about the game after the jump:
The Game:
- A random group receives a word which the class has to guess
- The group has to act out the word but cannot move, speak or use props, i.e. a statue.
-2 minutes to come up with an idea
- The class yells out answers until the correct word is guessed.
Below are a couple of pictures from the class. Can you guess the word based on the living statues? Don't rush to the end to see them, actually spend 2 minutes thinking about what they could be describing.
Can you guess the word?
Do you think you got the 1st one? Hmm what about this one?
Lastly what about this one? hmmmm...
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Not so hard right?
- Design
- Integrity
- Abstract
What i took away:
This gives a glimpse as to how engineers tries to translate engineering requirements into something that makes sense to them. The translation of the words that customers use is useful to help get the correct meaning behind the reason it was used, and to improve the product perception and desirabilty.
The words used in class, the engineers had to grab ideas using the constraints given to them.This is common practice among engineering designers and can often translate into different ideas but is usually the start of many design processes leading to the problem statement. The end result is usually a sustainable solution that meets the requirements set out by the customer and the contraints given to the engineer. The constraints i.e. time, no speaking or moving etc. helps draw to the idea of compromise and efficiency. This class, along with the game helped bring those ideas and concepts to life.
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