ENGR119

Engineering Design
Vijay Gupta

An Introduction to Design Method

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1

What is Designing?

We all know that a civil engineer designs skyscrapers, bridges, or water-distribution networks. A mechanical engineer designs new fuel-efficient automobiles, cranes to build skyscrapers, or revolutionary new robots to help the paraplegics in their daily lives. An architect designs low-cost housing for the urban poor, modern hospitals, or domed-in shopping malls. A chemical engineer designs ten-thousand-ton-a-day petroleum refineries, or new catalytic converters to alleviate the pollution caused by using the products of these very refineries. An aerospace engineer designs comfortable jets for intercontinental travel, or ballistic missiles to wipe out cities. To design is to innovate and create. The inventions of the wheel, the plough, the hurricane lantern, the steam engine, the electric generator and the motor, the wireless, the computing machine, etc., are all designs of greater or lesser significance. But it is not only an engineer who designs. Almost all-human activity seems to be revolving around design. We hear of fashion designers, set designers, exhibition designers, book designers, lesson designers, banquet designers, and interior designers. The verb to design is used in such a wide range of contexts that one is no longer sure of what the word implies. Surely, the design of a supersonic fighter aircraft with the latest fly-by-wire and stealth technology must be a precise, mathematically oriented and a highly organized activity, while a movie-set design would hardly appear to be so. A search of the recent writings on design yields the following definitions:
To prepare the preliminary sketch or the plans for a work to be executed. 2. To plan form and structure of. [Random House Dictionary] Design is a general activity of human progress, and particularly for the satisfaction of recognized needs. [Hubka, 1982] [To design is] to decide what the customer requires, decide what product will meet the customers needs and provide all the instructions that will enable the manufacturer to make the product. [Leech, 1973] ..seeds of human future. [Jones, 1970] .. relating product with situation to give satisfaction. [Gregory, 1966] ..decision-making in the face of uncertainty with a high penalty 1962] .. a goal directed problem-solving activity. [Archer, 1965] for errors. [Asimow,

An Introduction to Design Method

.. an iterative decision-making activity to produce plans by which resources are converted into systems or devices, preferably optimally, to meet human needs. [Woodson, 1966] Design [is] the creation of synthesized solutions in the form of products, processes, or systems that satisfy perceived needs. [Suh, 1990] ... the optimum solution to the sum of the true needs of a circumstances. [Matchet and Briggs] particular set of

A close look at these seemingly diverse definitions yields the following keywords that can be taken to characterize design: it is a prescriptive activity; it is need oriented; it is iterative; and it is concerned with optimality. And since optimization is meaningful only in the presence of constraints, a design must address the relevant constraints. The constraints on a design and its designer can be the constraints of resources, of tight deadlines, and could be legal or societal in nature. A fuller discussion of the nature and implications of these keywords will be taken up a little later. We string these five keywords together to arrive at the following operational definition: Design is an iterative process concerned with generating ideas and prescribing ways to turn into reality these ideas to satisfy optimally, under the relevant constraints, some specified or perceived needs. The term reality here includes more than the physical and the material forms. A chemical engineer designs the process by which an advanced polymeric material may be manufactured profitably. A computer scientist designs software to accomplish a given task in a user-friendly manner. The chemical process and the computer algorithm are Fig. 1.1 Scientists study the world as it is. Engineers create the real enough for our purpose world that never has beenTheodore Von Karman. While a here. But designing does not scientific enquiry begins from a curiosity, a design process starts with the realization of a need. include all transformations of ideas into reality. An artist, too, transforms her ideas into concrete forms for the purposes of revealing her personal reactions to what is happening around her. But we will not term her work as designing, for though she might be satisfying her own need for expression, it is quite debatable as to what societal needs she is addressing her work to. Mere ideation, howsoever lofty it may be, is not enough to qualify for the term design. An idea is not a design if it is not put to the service of man. A designers work is not done until she has seen the idea through its development into a material reality, or at least demonstrated, beyond reasonable doubt, that the idea is sound. Clearly the definition of designing given above includes not only the work of the engineers and architects but also that of managers, planners, politicians, academicians,

An Introduction to Design Method

and others who have specific goals and who work to achieve a optimally as possible within the constraints of available resources.

1.2

Early Man as a Designer

When man learnt to walk on his two feet, he was not better endowed physically than many other animals of the forest with whom he had to struggle in the ever-waging battle for survival. He could not run fast or swim with any great proficiency, and was not very adept at climbing trees. Yet, in the end, he came out far ahead of the other animals. He mastered not only his natural competitors, but also the nature itself to such an extent that now his only adversary in the struggle for survival is he himself. This became possible because he started fashioning the natural resources around him to suit his purpose. Early man found out that he could kill small animals for food better if the stones he used were made sharp by chipping them. He started fashioning clubs when he found out that he could kill better if he extended his arms out to get better leverage. Since a stone thrown at larger speeds was deadlier, he constructed the bow-gun, and then a bow-and-arrow. Much later, he discovered that some of the seeds he was eating could be grown, and the growth was better if the earth was scratched before sowing. So he designed the plough. Tilling the fields was hard work, so he modified the plough to hitch it to the recently domesticated animals. He discovered the idea of a wheel and made a cart and a potters wheel. Man has, thus, been adding, at first slowly and now at an everincreasing pace, to his cornucopia of tools and implements. In fact, the history of evolution of the human society, and the good life that we enjoy today is nothing but the story of man adding to his treasure of material artefacts through what is broadly termed as the process of design. If we take a careful look at the history of our material culture, we discover that most of the traditional tools and implements took very long times, sometimes even centuries, of slow change to acquire their present forms. They changed gradually as time passed, each change making a small improvement on the preceding model. Each change was made apparently in response to some difficulty faced by the users, or to introduce a new feature that would render the implement more useful. This trial-and-error process of slow change is much like the biological evolution where changes that give a species an advantage in the battle of survival are passed on to the future generations, while the adverse features die out. One characteristic feature of this process of design by evolution was the absence of any visible channel of information transmittal from one designer to another, and of any record of the design details. Fragmentary information was stored in memory, learnt, and passed down during the long periods of apprenticeship through which the master craftsmen, who were essentially the designers, went. The overall shape of the product, and the process of achieving it were passed on to the future generations of artisans, but the reasons for the same were lost in the absence of any deliberate tradition of codifying the design features. But the pressures exerted by the increasing pace of industrialization rendered the process of design by evolution as outdated. The new manufacturing methods with the division of labour, expanded reach of the market, and the consequent increased penalties for design errors, or at least the cost of lost opportunities and the need for cooperative efforts of
4

An Introduction to Design Method

many experts, all combined to call for methods which gave more control of the process of designing through better documentation and communication. The method of design by scaled drawings was developed as a response to changing requirements of the industrial revolution. The method served adequately up until very recently when the globalization of industry and commerce has placed such stringent demands on the design efforts that radically new methods of design are being sought.

1.3

The Process of Design

The design activity as defined above can be seen as a process of building a bridge between the resources available on one hand, and the needs, aspirations and desires of the humanity on the other. When Alexander Graham Bell dreamt of a machine conveying human voices across large distances, he put together a device made up of commonly available resources -- iron cores, resistance wires and metal diaphragms, and invented (read: designed) a telephone. When Wright brothers built the first aircraft, they put pieces of wood, fabric, and wires together to fashion the frame that generated enough lift to sustain the weight. How did Bell and Wrights know that they must proceed in a certain manner? Surely, when they started they Fig. 1.2 Engineering as a profession is concerned with could not have known for sure what more than just design. It is concerned with keeping the material world of man adequately supplied, and this calls would work and what would not. for various other functions. Design activity is midway How did they arrive at that specific between practical and abstract, and perhaps that is why it arrangement that worked from is the most complicated of endeavours. innumerable others that would not? What makes a design problem particularly tortuous is the fact that designing is like finding ones way in an uncharted sea. Since most problems have some new element, there is very little to guide one along. There may be some experience with a related or a similar problem but, in general, one has little to start with except a few ideas that may be more in the nature of hope than anything else. There is, no doubt, in each story of a remarkable invention a fair bit of luck of hitting the right combination and a stroke of genius that saw what needs to be done, but there also is involved an organization of systematic effort that channelled the designers labour towards the right solution. The process at work is termed the design process and it consists of a whole set of related activities: problem definition, generation of alternatives, evaluation of alternatives, development of the concept into a physical embodiment, detailing, documenting, and testing. This book is based on the assumption that such a process can be researched, learnt and taught. The process is not a recipe, a prescription or a formula that, if followed, would guarantee the result. The knowledge or even practice of the design process does not make

An Introduction to Design Method

a Bell or a Marconi of an ordinary mortal. The truly inventive do not even need to be explicitly aware of this process, which they follow intuitively. The hope that underlies this book is that an understanding of the systematic method that organizes and guides the inventive genius will help the not-so-gifted in organizing their design efforts better, so that they can exploit their creative potentials more efficiently. One of the most fundamental problems that every designer has to grapple with is: what is a good design? Of course, I must design optimally and I must design to satisfy a need. But if we look at the evolution of almost any product of human endeavour, we see that man is never satisfied with just the basic product that does the job adequately. We are, forever, looking to add value to every design. Most of the early chemical technology was concerned with development of dyes, paints and pigments for decorating apparel, walls of temples, houses and other buildings, and other material artefacts. Similarly, almost all of the earliest metallurgy evolved in response to the human need for adornment. Our preoccupation with clothes, jewellery and accessories cannot be dismissed simply as vanity. A washing machine, even if it sits in the laundry room, must not just wash clean but must also look beautiful if it is to find customers.

1.4 The Purpose of Design

Should I design it to be functional, or should I design it to be aesthetically pleasing, is a question that bothers most new designers. Papanek [1974] argues that this is a wrong question to ask since to be aesthetically pleasing is an inherent part of being functional. Papanek introduces what he terms as the function complex to describe the various dimensions of functionality. Papanek has identified the six dimensions of the function of a design as need, use, telesis, association, method and aesthetics. (See Fig. 1.3) 1.4.1 Need

Fig. 1.3 The Function Complex

A design exists solely in response to a specified or a perceived need and, therefore, the satisfaction of that need is the most essential function of a design. But this is not as simple as it appears. Very often, the statement of need that a designer starts her work with is incomplete or even misleading. One of the most difficult problems faced by a designer is to isolate the true need of a given situation from all the various expressions of need that she may be given. As a simple example, consider the hoopla surrounding the introduction of inexpensive cars in the Indian market in response to the long-felt need for an inexpensive car. A little careful thought immediately reveals that the intrinsic need of a middle-class Indian family living in megalopolises is not for a fuel-efficient low-priced car, as many erroneously believed and worked for, but is for a cheap and convenient transportation system. When the need is viewed in this light, a light-rail mass-transit

An Introduction to Design Method

system might appear to be a better answer than millions of cars zigzagging on the crowded roads of Delhi emitting life-destroying exhaust gases. Many more examples can be found where either the careless designer or the hypnotic persuasion of the dream merchants has distorted the fundamental need beyond recognition. Human need to have cleaner clothes does not lead one necessarily to a washing machine that does not just wash, but cleans, it may as well point towards dailywear comfortable fabrics that are stain-resistant. Then again, architects often come across clients who need a house, but have not the foggiest idea what it is that they are looking for in a house. They expect the architect to actually tell them what they should be looking for. The requirements of modern living are so complex that we need expert guidance at even formulating exactly what a house should hold for us. The responsibility of the designer is immense in this scenario: isolating the true needs of a situation from false perceptions that arise from the distortions introduced by habit, self-serving commercialization, or even carelessness. 1.4.2 Use Henry Dryfuss, reputed to be one of the founders of the modern profession of industrial designs, writes [Dryfuss, 1951] that while working on a design project the designers on his staff have always kept before them the concept that what [they] are working on is going to be ridden in, sat upon, looked at, talked into, activated, operated, or in some way used by people individually or en masse. If the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the industrial designer has failed. If, on the other hand, people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient -- or just plain happier -- the designer has succeeded. Our common experience with a large number of engineered goods suggests that not many design offices follow Dryfuss's maxim. Aluminium teakettles used in the roadside teastalls everywhere are guaranteed to scald even the most careful user. Modern four-burner kitchen stoves on the market have their burners so close together that burn accidents are quite common. Synthetic saris being highly flammable are virtual death traps. One comes across burner-top saucepans with handles so heavy that they tip if not filled to the brim. Children are forever hurting themselves on patently dangerous toys simply because some designer visualized them only as they should be ideally played with. The designers should also consider that a child may put a toy in her mouth, or may even fall on it. She may also hurl it on another child in a fit of tantrum. We have all played with toy guns with 303-type bolt action and have had our thumbs crushed when we have inadvertently, but quite naturally, placed them in the path of the advancing bolts. The pity is that all these flaws could have been entirely and easily avoided, only if the designer had heeded the advice of Dryfuss, and taken care to sit back and look at her design from the point of view of not just the customer with cash in her pocket-book, but also that of the user, with all her capabilities and constraints.

An Introduction to Design Method

1.4.3 Telesis Papanek uses the term telesis to denote that a design reflects the times and conditions that have given rise to it, and that it fits in with the general human socio-economic order in which it is to operate. The traditional Indian architecture required placement of the family living quarters around a central open courtyard. The plan was well suited to the climate, the semi-urban life-styles, and the large joint-families of the yester-years. With increasing urbanization, and borrowing of ideas from the west, the Indian architecture started changing, so much so that almost all present- day constructions in large cities have done away with the courtyards, and instead have living and bed-rooms around an enclosed lobby. This makes eminent sense in houses with effective climate control, but frequent power break-downs and the high cost of power, when it is available, make these houses extremely uncomfortable over most of the year. Our ministry for rural development has attempted many times to improve the almost nonexistent sanitation of the Indian villages. Among many hare-brained schemes that it has thought up over the years was the one that sought to popularize the cabinet-type lavatory by distributing, either free-of-cost or at very heavily subsidized rates, metal cabinets to be erected over soak pits within the rural household compounds. Now, the concept of a lavatory within the house just does not fit in with the ethos of the village folks, and most of the cabinets ended up, after suitable modifications, as rodent-proof grain bins. Contrast this with the very down-to-earth solution given by Mahatma Gandhi. He advised the villagers to take a trowel along while they go to the fields to relieve themselves and to use it to cover up with dirt after they are through. This is a first rate example of telesis in action, the dictionary meaning of which is the deliberate, purposeful utilization of the processes of nature and society to obtain particular goals. 1.4.4 Association One of the findings of the immense amount of research done in consumer psychology by that great engine of modern industry, namely, the advertising fraternity, is that the acceptance of a product by people is controlled to a large extent by their psychological conditioning that goes back to their earliest childhood. For example, a gleaming table with chrome-plated legs and a sleek top is not likely to sell as a dining table, for it appears to belong more to a surgical operation theatre than to a family dining room. A designer is well advised to consider the associations that her design would trigger in the customers and which could well spell the acceptance or rejection of the product. At the lowest level of association, the pharmaceutical companies know that marketing vitamin pills for children in toy-shaped bottles can increase their acceptance by children. A computer monitor looks entirely different from a television set not because of technical differences in the two, of which there are hardly any, but because of different associations that are intended to be triggered by the two products. The great debate between the proponents of a television set as pieces of furniture versus those that look at it as a piece of sophisticated technical equipment has not yet been settled finally. The functioning of a design at the associative plane can have much deeper concerns than such frivolities as to what should be the shape of a mens cologne bottle to give it a

An Introduction to Design Method

macho association, and what should a lip-stick look like to have enough sex appeal. The worldwide use of the standardized clock-face has resulted in almost a universal association of a clock-wise motion on the dial of any meter with the increasing value of the variable represented. A designer who ignores this is taking grave risks. Many electric energy meters on the market are designed with alternate dials going in clock-wise and anti-clockwise directions (See Fig. 1.4). This is apparently because of the simplification introduced in the gearing required for such a design. But this design results in a large number of reading errors and consequent irate customers. A similar association results in a universal acceptance (or even expectation) that the longest hand on the aeroplane altitude meter of Fig. 1.5 reads hundreds of feet, while the shortest reads tenthousands. Many psychological associations are nearly universal, and have probably come about because of the cumulative biological learning of human beings as a species. Almost everyone asked to associate the words maluma and takete with the two line drawings of Fig. 1.6 Fig. 1.6 Which is maluma and which is takete? would choose the figure on left as takete (Koehler, 1970). Further, if asked to associate the word mother, one would invariably associate it with the one on the right even when the takete would remind many Christians of the star of Bethlehem and of nativity. 1.4.5 Method Another factor that needs to be considered when judging a design as good or bad is the method. The method in this context refers to the materials, tools and processes used for the execution of the design. A design must reflect the process used for executing it. Similarly, a good design never attempts to fake the material used as what it is not. A bridge made of stone masonry should look quite different from a reinforced concrete bridge, which, in turn, should look different from a fabricated steel bridge. (See Fig. 1.7). A cast-steel bridge that mimics a masonry bridge is definitely not a good design, because it has used a shape or form which is suited to the properties of the masonry (which has no strength in tension, and relies completely on the compressive strength), and thereby has

Fig. 1.7 A stone arch bridge, a steel wire bridge, and a pre-stressed concrete bridge look quite different from one another reflecting the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of the respective material of construction.

An Introduction to Design Method

not utilized fully the great tensile strength of steel. Different materials offer different opportunities to the designer and impose different constraints. The famous French architect, Le Corbusier, who is well known for creating Chandigarh, the first fully-planned city of modern India, extolled the vast new opportunities offered by reinforced concrete in the following words: Reinforced concrete has brought about a revolution in the aesthetics of construction. By suppressing the roof [which needs to be quite prominent in the wooden-frame construction, hitherto common in European and American architecture] and replacing it by terraces, reinforced concrete is leading us to a new aesthetics of the plan, hitherto unknown. [Le Corbusier, 1946]. The advent of block-boards and laminates in the Indian market in the sixties had a very deep effect on the design of furniture. After a bit of experimentation with marble and floral finishes, the general design of furniture settled down to what is best suited to the new material. Gone are the intricate carvings and double-curvature surfaces on Burma teak. Instead, we now have a new idiom in furniture design with sleek lines and flat surfaces exploiting the nature and properties of block-boards and laminates. A bicycle wheel with its thin pre-stressed steel spoke is an apt example of a design that has exploited the material, tools and processes to the utmost, and does, therefore, passes the methods test beautifully. (See Fig. 1.8). The great strength of steel in tension has been exploited to the extreme by pre-tensioning the spokes so that they are always in tension, even when the externally applied load acts in such a way as would have caused compression in the absence of pretension. The construction of wheel is so simple that the very complicated task of lacing and pre-tensioning to the true shape can be accomplished quite easily and accurately using very simple tools. 1.4.6 Aesthetics
Fig. 1.8 The spoked bicycle wheel. The pre-tensioned steel spokes are always in tension. The extended hub and the tangential and alternating-direction lacing of spokes makes the rim constrained in all the six degrees of freedom, three translational and three rotational. It is estimated that if all the steel of the spokes was made into a disc spanning the entire space between the rim and the hub, the thickness of the disc will be less than that of a sheet of paper. The design is so good that it has not changed at all since about 1860 when it first appeared. It is only now that another exciting new material, carbon-fibre composite, has appeared that new wheel designs have started showing up in racing bicycles.

Fig. 1. 9 Taj Mahal

What is it that qualifies the Taj Mahal (Fig. 1.9) to be regarded as a dream in marble so beautiful that it has moved many a first-time visitors to tears? Does the reason for this effect lie in the saga of love associated with it,

10

An Introduction to Design Method

or is there some intrinsic beauty in it? Does beauty lie only in the eye of the beholder, or is it an acquired affectation that will cause you to be regarded as lacking in 'education,' if you cannot appreciate it? It is now believed that we indisputably possess a sense of aesthetics that makes us regard some things as beautiful and some as ugly. This sense of aesthetics has its origins in the functional perfection of our own body and of the nature around us. For example, our limbs like that of most other animals have the main muscle mass concentrated near the fulcrums to help move the limbs, while they taper towards the extremities, so that their inertia and, thus, the effort required for motion is minimized. The evolutionary advantage that results from the functional usefulness of this form has ensured its replication around us in nature, and therefore, this shape is almost universally regarded as beautiful. If one sees a moving lever that is bulkier near its extremity than near its point of attachment, one generally regards it as not beautiful. Le Corbusier proposed a proportioning system, termed as the Modulor (see Fig. 1.10), based on the proportioning of the major parts of the human body. This system requires that for the shapes to be pleasing, their major dimensions should be proportioned in the series: 1, 1.618, 2.618, 4.236, 6.854, ... Each term in this series is the sum of the preceding two terms. The basic ratio of the series is 1: 1.618, which the Greeks termed as the golden section because a rectangle with sides in this ratio was judged to be of the most pleasing proportions. Le Corbusier regarded the numbers of the Modulor as more than numbers and as facts in themselves [having], a concrete body. [Le Corbusier, 1951]. Following this line of reasoning, it might be said that our aesthetic sense is a product of the belief that nature, which works through evolution and which, in Fig. 1.10 Modulor of Le Corbusier turn, is chiefly functional (even if at times it may go overboard and produce a peacock), knows best. Therefore, the source of our aesthetics, which is mainly concerned with what looks right from a functional point of view, is primarily the observation of nature. A building shaped as an inverted pyramid would generally not look right because it appears to be unstable. It is interesting to note that balance, symmetry, unity, rhythm, and form are words frequently used in evaluating any work aesthetically, and all of them have origins in nature and its preoccupation with function and efficiency. The looking right test for functionality served us adequately till we were dealing with things close to nature, or with products that had developed so slowly that their evolution could almost be termed as organic, because for such products we had sufficient time for formulating a sense of what is functionally efficient and, thus, beautiful (See Fig 1.11). But with the recent explosion of inventions and design activity how does one get a feel of what looks right? How should a good aeroplane look? Perhaps a comparison with the
11

An Introduction to Design Method

majestic eagle gives us a clue. The Anglo-French Concorde super-sonic passenger transport aeroplane is universally regarded as a very elegant flying machine, undoubtedly because its outer organic lines suggest immediately the flying prowess of an eagle. But what is a welding-robot-like shape. Modelling it after the human welder that it replaces is clearly not satisfactory, since a robot cannot even begin to have (as yet, at least) the kind of versatility the human being has, and certainly the production processes and the materials available for its manufacture are far inferior to those available to nature. The ET humanoid shape of comic books and movies too is not what is optimum, for that shape too has origins in what we consider as reasonable (and thus beautiful) based on our experience with terrestrial beings. It is said that Walt Disney modelled his universally-loved cartoon animals after the head-heavy proportions of lovable human babies.

Fig. 1.11 The almost organic looking lines of a scythe are a result of slow evolution to perfection over centuries

As has been said before, man has always used ornamentation in his tools, appliances and products. A typical earthen jar made by the village artisan would have flowing, organic curves that appear pleasing to the eye. The advent of the industrial revolution changed the shapes of the objects drastically, since the machines can produce efficiently only simpler shapes consisting of straight lines or circular arcs. In the beginning considerable effort was spent in applying floral embellishments to lathe pedestals and to hydraulic hammers. The first stirrings against this business of hiding the Fig. 1.3 The ET humanoid. machine behind motifs borrowed from another age began in 1880s. Machine is here to stay," proclaimed Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps the greatest architect of his age, who realized that a design that does not exploit the new processes and these normal tools of civilization is not an elegant design. His ideas were the forerunner of the function complex as outlined here. He is regarded by many as the first designer who rejected the conflict between form and function by proclaiming that form and function are one. Wright, though he is regarded correctly as the giant that gave us a new aesthetics for the age of the machine, worked primarily in the area of architecture. The foremost name that is associated with modern design of products of everyday use is Walter Gropius who established in 1919 the German Bauhaus school of design. The Bauhaus turned the

Fig. 1.12 The Anglo-French Concorde super-sonic passenger transport aeroplane is universally regarded as a very elegant flying machine, undoubtedly because its outer organic lines suggest immediately the flying prowess of an eagle.

12

An Introduction to Design Method

profession of the industrial designer up side down, or rather inside out. It gave us such slogans as designing from the inside outwards," and that design is not an applied or industrial art, but an essential part of the production process itself. Its message is almost identical to the modern battle cry of concurrent-engineering.

1.5

Summary

Design is an iterative process concerned with generating ideas and prescribing ways to turn into reality these ideas to satisfy optimally, under the relevant constraints, some specified or perceived human needs. It is concerned with practicality and reality and not merely with ideation, though the generation of brilliant ideas forms a very important component of designing, and gives it the glamour that is normally attached to it. A good design is a functional design. But the function of a design should be viewed in a wider context. The complex of function is seen to encompass six major components: need, use, telesis, association, method and aesthetics.

13

An Introduction to Design Method

2. THE DESIGN PROBLEM

Consider a young engineer working in a small design office who has been asked to design an automatic door for an air terminal. The doors at an air terminal pose a persistent problem to the passengers who may have a bag in each hand, or who may be pushing a trolley and, therefore, have difficulty opening closed doors. The typical solution consists of providing doors that open automatically when one approaches them. Our designer could choose to handle the problem as posed, and can get busy deciding whether she should use hinged and swinging doors or sliding doors. She would start devising the sensors that would pick-up the approach of a passenger and activate the doors. There are numerous other details that would need the designers attention. But this is only one approach to handling this design problem. If our designer is a bit more enterprising, she could also begin by questioning whether the terminal needs an automatic door or even any door at all. Such arguments are not totally pointless, because they often lead to new and, in many ways, more fundamental ways of looking at the problems. If we question the very purpose of a door at so public a place as an air terminal, we are likely to discover that the only valid purpose it serves is to keep the cool conditioned (or warmed up) air from blowing out. Viewed in this light, an air curtain might present itself as a better solution to the problem. This solution would have obviously been out of the reach of the designer who started thinking directly in terms of the possible sensors and mechanisms. This approach of broadening the scope of the problem is termed as escalation of the problem up the hierarchy of levels. In general, four hierarchical levels of scope are recognized: the systems level, the sub-systems level, the product level, and the component level (See Fig. 2.1). The problem of the terminal door was originally posed at the product level. The designer when questioning whether one really needs a door or worse, was attempting to escalate the problem to a higher, namely, the sub-systems or the systems level. Attempts at escalation are highly desirable in most situations. But such a train of thought could very easily lead the designer into considering whether new kinds of air terminals need to be designed, or even whether air travel as it exists today is desirable. Not bad questions at all, but need they be asked, and answered every time a fitting has to be redesigned at the terminal building? The escalation leads to ever widening definition of the problem, and can easily get out of hand if not attempted judiciously. On the other hand, our designer may go in the other direction, and decide that the problem of the automatic door design is essentially rooted in finding a new kind of sensor, and may proceed to undertake a detailed research programme into the design and performance of possible sensors. The level of scope of the problem is thus reduced from the product level to the component level. This is termed as the regression of the problem.

14

An Introduction to Design Method

Fig. 2.1 A design problem may have any of the four scopes: the component level, the product level, the systems level, or the community level.

It should be clear from the discussion above that the scope of a design problem could be changed. Often, the statement of a problem as given is not at the correct level of scope for a satisfactory solution to emerge. It can be either escalated or regressed from the level it is posed. Both approaches are valid and, as will be recommended in Chapter 4, both must be attempted to a degree. The problem of inner-city decay that arises because of the affluent people moving out to live in suburbs can not be solved by designing better and more expensive housing blocks. People move out to suburbs largely because they are quieter, less polluted and less crimeprone. Hence this problem cannot be handled by designing at anything less than the systems level. Similarly, the problem of public transport in a large city, like Delhi, cannot be handled by just providing more buses, light rail, or even an underground train system. The solution to the transport problem may lie not in more transport facilities but in ensuring that people do not need to travel as much by locating housing close to their places of employment and other natural social foci. But it is not prudent or possible to escalate all problems to the systems level. Surely, the boss who asks the new lad in the design office to work on the design of a fire-escape latch for a library building would have little patience if told the next morning that it is not a latch she should be asking for, but a brand new library with information stored on a noncombustible medium. Not all levels of designing outlined above are available to all designers because of the lack of time, resources, authority, or even relevance. Attempt though should be made to design at as high a level as competence, authority, prudence, reasonableness or practicality allows. There is another problem in designing at a high level of scope. The higher the level, the wider is the span of concerns, but lesser is the possibility of attention to the details. An architect while designing the overall relationships among the spaces she creates has to worry about the location of windows and shutters (at sub-systems level). But obviously

15

An Introduction to Design Method

she cannot be expected to consider the details of hinges and sashes to be used on the window frames. It is usually the interior designer who has to worry about these details (at the product and the component levels), but if she too decides to design at the level of the inter-relationships between spaces rather than working out the details of the relationships already defined, we shall forever have an unfinished project on our hands. Somebody has to design at the lowest level of scope as well.

2.2

The Stake-Holders in the Design Problem

A design situation is rarely a simple client-expert one-to-one situation. Many more persons have stakes in the outcome of a design and, therefore, they attempt to come forward to control the process of design and its outcome. We consider here, as example, one situation where perhaps the number and types of stakeholders are the largest. Imagine an architect who has been contracted by a school management committee to plan and design a new school building. The school management will, of course, brief the architect on what they have and what they are looking for: the dimensions and location of the piece of land, the numbers of rooms, the class-sizes, other special requirements such as assembly room, gymnasium, teachers' rooms, storage spaces, laboratories, library requirements, administrative office space, scope for future expansion, etc. Beyond that they would expect the architect to tell them what they should be looking for. The architect also has a stake in the building. It is going to be her design, and if she does a good job she will get credit for it, and possibly more clients. So she goes out and tries to find out more about what goes into a school. She finds out that a school must have well-lit well-ventilated rooms, that the assembly hall will also be used for school concerts and plays and should be provided with wings, green-rooms, stowage space for musical instruments and other props, wide circulation areas for students to run from one class to another, etc. She would worry about what kind of flooring material to use which will take the punishment that the thousands of small feet will dish out every day, will be easy to maintain clean, and will be non-slippery when the kids track in the rain water. The architect will also have her own personal preferences, prejudices and quirks of taste and style. Another major stakeholder in the school-project is the state. There are perhaps more municipal codes and byelaws to regulate the design of school buildings than for any other kind of buildings. The step-width and riser-height of stairs, the provision of fire-escapes, the number and locations of lavatories, of play grounds, width of corridors, illumination levels in class-rooms, and an almost innumerable list of other requirements have been legislated for. An architect must make herself familiar with all such stipulations and is bound to follow them to the letter. The fourth source of design specifications is the most important stakeholder of all. It is the users, consisting of the children (and teachers) in this case. The users should be more concerned about the design, but usually have little direct say in laying out the specifications. In fact, all others including the management, the designer, and above all, the legislator, claim to be operating on behalf of the users. All building codes rules and regulations are purported to be legislated for the protection of the users. Besides the legislated requirements, a designer also worries about the reach of the little kids while deciding the height of wash basins in the toilets, or that of the

16

An Introduction to Design Method

nozzles of the drinking water fountains. The placement of the chalkboards in the classrooms is decided the basis of the convenience of the teachers who write on them. Not all the specifications mentioned above have the same priorities. The client may change her requirements as implications of her wishes unfold. Thus, she may decide to have the assembly room with stackable chairs, or even with chair-banks that swing out to clear the floor to be able to use the space as a gymnasium, once she finds that the cost of the two independently goes over the budget available. The designer architect who wished to use the assignment at hand to demonstrate the cost advantages of the novel shell-roof, the design of which had been intriguing her for some time, may abandon the concept once she finds out that the local builders do not have facilities to do the shuttering for such a roof. But the legislated requirements of the appropriate fire escape from the library must be met even if it costs too much, or interferes with the elevation that the designer wished for.

2.3

The Characteristics of the Design Problems

Consider the problem faced by a manufacturer of small diesel engines who finds her engines overheating. If she consults a heat transfer expert, she may be advised that she needs a bigger or better heat exchanger or radiator. If the manufacturer had taken her problem to a combustion-chamber designer, the cause of the problem would have been diagnosed as a fault in the design of the cylinder head, the placement of injector nozzles, or simply in the timing of fuel injection. A metallurgist on the other hand might have advised the manufacturer not to worry about the excessive temperatures but to use a new fancy material for her cylinder liners that would protect her engine from damage even with such temperatures. Our understanding of a design situation and the 'fundamental' nature of the problem at hand depends largely on our viewpoint and the general or special skills that we possess. We should, therefore, realize that a design problem cannot be stated with complete objectivity and, in fact, demands a subjective interpretation. It also implies that a designer when facing a new problem should be careful enough to consider if the problem presented to her could be more profitably handled by some other type of expert, and advise the client accordingly. There are many popular guides to better design practices, which advise a budding designer to state the problem comprehensively before she begins to look for solutions. But this is an impossibility as must be amply clear by now. Let us for a moment travel back in time to the early 1960s when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the USA launched the programme to land a man on the moon and to bring him back home safely. At that time, the engineers and scientists of NASA had no idea of the nature of the lunar surface that the future astronauts would encounter when they would touchdown on the moon. No one had seen the lunar-surface details smaller than a kilometer in dimensions, the maximum resolution of the available telescopes limited by the distortions due to the earth's atmosphere. No one could ensure that a vehicle could land safely on the moon without sinking out of sight in deep lunar dust or plunging through a brittle crust-like surface into a cavern or a crevasse. Similarly, no information

17

An Introduction to Design Method

was available on the kind of hazards, including the radiation environment that the astronauts would be facing. Under the circumstances, if the designers and planners of the Apollo programme had insisted on a complete and exhaustive specification of every thing before the project design started, we would still have been dreaming of conquering what is poetically called the last frontier. Instead, the project was so planned that collecting the information desired for the satisfactory execution of the design was part of the design process itself. It stands to reason that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to gather all the information necessary for a design unless we know exactly the direction in which the Fig. 2.2 Lunar Excursion Module. Designed to land two men on the moon. The lower design would descent stage lands on extendable legs and act as self-contained launching pad for the progress. For ascent stage for the return journey. Not the profusion of sharp angles. The LEM can be space example, a termed as the first trulyin any structure. It derives it shape from the fact that it does not ever have to operate atmosphere, and therefore, there is no requirement of NASA designers streamlining in the early sixties could not have been expected go about and learn all about air-locking capabilities of zip fasteners for the astronauts' suits unless the mission plan had started envisaging extra-vehicular excursions in space and on the lunar surface necessitating the use of pressurized suits with zip closures. If one is not careful one may end up with a lot of slavishly gathered information that has no bearing on the solution. Then again, even with the best of planning and foresight, the design, once started, may proceed in a completely unexpected direction calling for a fresh effort at gathering information. Within one single design problem too we can discern the various hierarchical levels identified earlier. The design of the overall Apollo mission is definitely at the systems level. Within and below it are the various sub-systems: the propulsion sub-system, the tracking sub-system, the spatial navigation sub-system, the living quarters, the lifesupport sub-system, etc. Within each sub-system would be a number of products: say, within the life-support sub-system one could think of products such as a space suit. The design of the airtight zipper would be a component-level problem within this product design problem.

18

An Introduction to Design Method

The designer at the systems level should profitably be concerned with defining the problem at that level only, for the problem to remain tractable. The research at this level is usually concerned with defining the design of the research to be carried out at the subsequent levels. Thus, the Apollo system designers first carried out a search of what kind of problems they are likely to face, and what kind of information may be required. They planned for a step-wise programme, starting from 'simple' orbital-transfer maneuvers, to the docking of command and lunar modules in space. They planned for concurrent Surveyor missions that explored the lunar surface from close quarters to be able to select the sites for landing, and to complete the design of the landing gear. The end result of any design effort is the detailed prescription of how to accomplish the identified goal. But since a design problem can never be comprehensively stated, and since each designer may select a different definition or even the scope of the problem, it should follow that the design solutions to a given situation are truly innumerable, and that different designers may, or shall we say, would come to quite different design solutions. Also, we can never be sure that there is no other way of looking at the problem or that some important aspect of it has not being missed, and, therefore, we can never say that we have covered all the solutions of a given problem. Similarly, as has been noted before, when one works on a problem, new facets of it are continually being revealed. Consequently, one cannot say that one has reached the end of the design process. Whatever anybody has done can always be improved upon. It is, in fact, an important decision to be made by the designer as when to say that she has reached the end of the road. It does not always mean that she is satisfied with what she has achieved, but rather that she does not think it is worth her while to continue any further, because in her judgment the chances of any significant betterment, given her understanding of the problem and the budgets of time and money available to her, are dim.

2.4

Summary

Four levels of the scope of design problems have been identified: the systems level, the sub-systems level, the product level, and the component level. A designer should attempt escalation and regression of the problem to find the appropriate level of scope at which the given problem should be or can be solved. Attempt should be made to design at as high a level as competence, authority, prudence, reasonableness or practicality allows. The plurality of stakeholders in a design means that several groups of persons contribute to the definition of the design problem. The sponsor or the client, the designer herself, the conscious-keepers through the legislators, and the actual users, all has stakes in the outcome of design. The actual requirements are the sum total of the wishes and dreams of all of them. Some of these are more rigid than the others. For example, the legislated constraints get priority over any of the wishes of the designer. Our understanding of a design situation and the 'fundamental' nature of the problem at hand depends largely on our viewpoint and the general or special skills that we possess. We should, therefore, realize that a design problem couldn't be stated completely objectively, and, in fact, needs a subjective interpretation. It also implies that a designer
19

An Introduction to Design Method

when facing a new problem should be careful enough to consider the possibility that the problem presented to her could be more profitably handled by some other type of expert, and should advise the client accordingly. It is never possible to comprehensively state a design problem. The exact direction that the solution would take is not evident at the beginning of a problem, and therefore, it is not prudent to slavishly collect all the information that can possibly have a bearing on the design. It is possible to discern four levels of hierarchy within a design problem: the system, the sub-system, the product, and the component levels. A designer at a particular hierarchical level should attempt to define the problem at that specific level only. Finally, it may be noted that there are innumerable design solutions to a problem, and that one can never say that one has reached the end of the design process. It is, in fact, a designer's decision to say that she has reached the end of the road. It does not always mean that she is satisfied with what she has achieved, but rather that she does not think it is worth her while to continue any further, because in her judgment the chances of any betterment, given her understanding of the problem and the budgets of time and money available to her, are dim.

20