Why do we design ?

In a nutshell . . . . TO SURVIVE

Most people these days exist by providing 'things' to others; in the case of engineers these 'things' are technical muscle-power or know-how, or physical artefacts - that is solutions to buyers' or hirers' particular problems. If these clients are not completely satisfied with the 'thing' provided then they will dismiss the provider, go somewhere else for their next 'thing', and tell everyone about the provider's unsatisfactory 'things'. If this happens often enough to a particular provider then that provider will cease to exist as a market force - nobody will want to know.
So clearly, if 'things' are not designed with care and attention to clients' needs then the provider will have problems - just like Jane and John . . . .

• Jane worked as an engineer for a firm of consulting engineers, one of a number of such firms specialising in minerals processing.
  A certain mining company intended to develop a new deposit and therefore required plant to process the mineral. It called for 'tenders' that is for plans and cost estimates for construction and operation of the plant. The various consulting firms simultaneously each set about designing the plant - ie. solving the client mining company's particular problem - and then reported to the client outlining its proposed optimum solution. Consultants receive no remuneration for this service.
  The client reviewed the solutions submitted by the various consulting firms, and awarded the contract for ongoing project management to the firm which had best satisfied its perceived needs. The successful consulting firm therefore had ongoing work for a year or two.
  Jane's firm was not successful in this instance. But this was unexceptional - consultants do not normally expect to win every contract which is put out to tender.
  But Jane's firm did not win the next job to come up either.
  Or the next . . . . . .
  Or the next !
  So what happened eventually ? Predictably, with no successful designs and with no money coming in, Jane's firm folded and Jane is now out looking for work.
  There could of course be reasons aplenty for Jane's firm sinking - but it could not hope to exist with designs which were demonstrably not competitive.
  Jane now realises that, while a score of 80% in a University examination might be regarded as excellent, in real life there are no marks whatsoever for coming second.

• John's firm, which makes and installs large industrial ovens, was approached by a client who wanted to install such an oven in its existing factory. John was delegated to look after the contract, so he examined thoroughly the myriad technical issues, including the most suitable choice of . . . .
  • energy source necessary to raise the oven's temperature,
  • location for the oven in the factory with regard to minimising transport of products from/to other manufacturing operations in the factory,
  • control mechanism needed to ensure that the oven's temperature stays within bounds,
  • fail-safe safety procedures which prevent any employee from being inadvertently locked in the oven
  • insulation thickness to optimally balance the first and ongoing costs of insulation,
  • chimney dimensions for projecting the exhaust gases high enough to ensure clean air for the surrounding environment
  • . . . . and so on, there were lots of other aspects to consider.
  John was technically competent. He carried out all his sums correctly - though we need not worry about the details at this stage. He was very satisfied when his recommended optimum solution (a gas-fired oven) was accepted and the oven was designed in detail, built and put into service.
  All went well until reports filtered in that the client's office staff were reporting headaches due to vibration of the office structure. Expensive investigation proved that the culprit was the oven's fan which drew air for gas combustion through an intake duct crossing the office ceiling. After further work John eventually had the duct re-routed from the adjacent wall as shown in the factory plan. John's firm had to pay for the investigation, for the modifications, for a number of medical bills, and for losses in production while the oven was out of service being modified.
  Again all went well until the gatekeepers started to complain bitterly about noise from the re-positioned air inlet next their hut. So it was back to the drawing board once again for John . . . . . he was not popular !
  Lessons that John learned from this experience included :
  • There is a lot more to design than mere technical calculations.
  • An incomplete design which does not take everyone's viewpoint into consideration is a recipe for trouble.
  • It is the designer's reponsibility to seek out these viewpoints
  • A solution must be close-to-optimum to start with, as retrospective fixes are never wholly satisfactory.

A problem is not a problem if it has been solved successfully in the past - it is trivial. Conversely if the solution to a problem is not known prior to design, then the problem is new and the solution also must be new.
The necessity for novelty in design is obvious where a number of competing providers of the same 'thing' coexist by continually providing new 'things'. Computer-'things' are a case in point - provider A first launches a completely new type of memory, provider B counters by making it half the size, provider C attacks via a drastic price cut enabled by a novel manufacturing technique, provider D edges ahead with a much faster operating system, and so on. Nobody can afford to stand still; nobody can exist by slavish copying; novelty is a necessity for good design, for survival.

Survival = Good design = Creativity

This does not imply that all aspects of a successful design have to be novel; you need not re-invent the wheel.

It is useful to view design in the context of a typical artefact which evolves from initial conception, through the distinct stages illustrated, to eventual obsolescence. A planned action undergoes an analogous sequence, however we shall concentrate on hardware.

• A need is recognised, ie. a problem is posed, so
• a certain artefact is designed to meet the problem - thereafter
• the artefact is manufactured, and
• sold/delivered to the user . . . .
• . . . . who operates it, causing wear and
• requiring maintenance to restore its effectiveness, until
• eventually it reaches the end of its economic life and is retired.

Various people are involved in the various stages - the designers, the manufacturers, the salespeople, the operators, the maintainers and the eventual dismantlers of an artefact are all completely different folk carrying out completely different tasks.
Design is the springboard for all subsequent stages, and so it is at the design stage that the later satisfaction of each and every one of these folk is, or is not, effectively set in stone. That is why the 'feedback of anticipatory ideas' is highlighted in the sketch, as it is vital that designers foresee - in every last detail - the interaction of the planned artefact with all these people, and endeavour to fulfill their wishlists. A designer must put herself in other folks' shoes, close her eyes and realistically imagine their interactions with the artefact.
Do not get carried away by technicalities. Remember always that it is people who make decisions to purchase; it is people who have to live with your design. A designer's primary goal is the satisfaction of people, not of elegant mathematical expressions.

Design is keeping everybody happy

. . . or at least as happy as possible. Sometimes it may be nigh on impossible to please everyone, but you'll never-never know if you never-never have a go at trying to please them. That's why we design ! We'll see later how to factor in conflicting criteria and different agenda. If you are not sure what these are likely to be in a particular case, then don't be like John - find out.

The importance of good design is underlined by the fact that in Australian manufacturing industry around 70% of product costs are defined at the design stage. As the average profit is only some 7% it will be appreciated that indifferent design is commercially intolerable, as Jane's employers discovered to their cost. The life stages sketch emphasises the importance of creativity and economics in design, and of the technical specifications and safety in operation. We shall return to this critical safety issue later.

Also shown in the sketch are some facets of the design process which it is useful to introduce at this point :

• A feasibility study is a report describing in broad but realisable terms the optimum solution. An important component of a real life feasibility study is the solution's cost, but detailed costing is generally not expected in this course.
• Operations research is the name given to the branch of mathematics which models industrial and commercial processes such as queuing, distribution, scheduling etc.
• Detail design completes all details necessary for the next stage - manufacture - details which are omitted in the deliberately broad-brush treatment of the feasibility study. In practice a solution must first be confirmed as feasible and the decision made to proceed with it, before detailing commences.
• If a design lies at the cutting edge of known practice or science then it may not be possible to accurately model certain aspects of its behaviour. Further research and development (R&D) involving experimentation must then be conducted before these aspects of the design can be finalised with confidence.
• Industrial design deals with artefacts' aesthetics, safety and ergonomics among other things. The principles of ergonomics are used to optimise human- machine interaction when designing eg. the controls of a bobcat (a mini bulldozer) so that the operator and the bobcat are essentially seamless with the operator's eyes, two feet and hands integral non-fatigued components of the control loops for turning, accelerating, reversing, braking, blade lifting, blade orienting and so on.
• Industrial relations together with occupational health and safety are obvious and important considerations in design - they are just facets of 'keeping everyone happy'.
• Murphy's Law states that :

If something can go wrong then it will go wrong - and at the worst possible time

Murphy cannot be ignored - there is no excuse for designers throwing up their hands and exclaiming 'How were we to foresee that happening ?' . . . . but they must foresee it (whatever it might be) and make allowance at the design stage to minimise its deleterious effects. Murphy is especially hard on beginning designers who have yet to learn that Nature does not always follow simple theoretical predictions. But Murphy is no respecter of persons, and many an experienced designer has suffered at his hands !

We wrap this section up by drawing attention to two articles from the technical press which throw further light on why we design :

• Seymour in 'Competition Analysis' lists many criteria which are commonly used by clients to compare the products of competing providers. Designers must be aware of all these criteria and design accordingly, and not focus solely on the 'technical specifications'.
• Somerville reports that 'Woodside Critical of Aust Suppliers' following construction of the NW Shelf LNG facilities. Local industry is lambasted for poor performance : 'Some 70% of the tenders (ie. feasibility studies) received from Australian companies were technically inadequate' and '. . related to lack of effort in preparation . .' This is certainly an indictment that designers ignore at their peril.

Having emphasized the importance of design, it is now time to look at How we go about it . . . .