1.1 Where and when do engineers design?

Question 1

Where might engineers work?

Answer 1

 for a large company that processes and distributes various food products could be asked to design a container for a new juice product

 for a design-and-construction company, designing part of a highway bridge embedded in a larger transportation project

 for an automobile company that is developing new instrumentation clusters for its cars

 for a school system that wants to design specialized facilities to better serve students with orthopedic disabilities

Question 2

What “Roles” are played as the design unfolds?

Answer 2

• Client: a person or group or company that wants a design conceived
• User: who will employ or operate whatever is being designed.
• Designer: whose job is to solve the client’s problem in a way that meets the user’s needs.

Question 3

What are two types of clients?

Answer 3

• Internal:
  (e. g., a person at the food company in charge of the new juice product)
• External:
  (e. g., the government agency that contracts for the new highway system)

Question 4

How does the Designer relate to the two types of clients?

Answer 4

The two types of clients are internal and external. The Designer may relate differently to internal and external clients.

Question 5

Who is the Client?

Answer 5

The Client is a person or group or company that wants a design conceived.

Question 6

What is the role of the User?

Answer 6

The role of the user is to employ or operate whatever is being designed.

Question 7

What is the role of the Designer?

Answer 7

The role of the designer is to:

• Solve the client’s problem in a way that meets the user’s needs.
• Understand what both the client and users want and need.
• Design something that can be built and that satisfies everybody.

Question 8

Who typically motivates and presents the starting point for design?

Answer 8

The Client typically motivates and presents the starting point for design.

Question 9

What is the Designer’s first task and why?

Answer 9

A designer’s first task is to question the client to clarify what the client really wants and translate it into a form that is useful to her as an engineer. This is the designer’s first task because it is typically the client who motivates and presents the starting point for design.

Question 10

Does the User have a stake in the design Process? Why or why not?

Answer 10

Yes. The User has a stake in the design process because designs have to meet the user’s needs.

Question 11

To whom does the designer have obligations?

Answer 11

Designers also have obligations not only to:

• Clients
• Users
• their profession
• the public

Obligations to the profession and the public are laid out in codes of ethics of engineering societies.

Question 12

What is the role of the Client?

Answer 12

The role of the client is to speak to the designer on behalf of the intended users.

Question 13

Name an example of product/structure of which the public has a stake in the design.

Answer 13

A new interstate highway

Question 14

Is the public implicit in the user?

Answer 14

No. The notion of the public may seem to be implicit in the user, this is not always the case.

Question 15

Why is it important to explicitly identify who is affected by a design?

Answer 15

Explicitly identifying who is affected by a design is important, because it may raise ethical issues in design projects

Question 16

What is one thing that both the designer and the client must understand?

Answer 16

Both the designer and the client must understand what the users want and what the public demands in a design.

Question 17

In what kinds of environments do engineering designers work?

Answer 17

• small and large companies
• start-up ventures
• government
• not-for-profit organizations
• engineering services firms

Question 18

What three parties are involved in a design effort? How are these parties involved?

Answer 18

Client: who has objectives that must be realized

Users (of the design): who have their own wishes

Designer: who must design something that can be built and that satisfies everybody.

Question 19

On what two stages of design does the nature of the designer’s work partly depend?

Answer 19

The nature of the work of designers depends, in part, on whether they are doing conceptual design or detailed design.

Question 20

What is conceptual design?

Answer 20

Conceptual design is the stage at which basic questions of form and content for a design are established (e.g. the nature of the goals of the designed item).

Question 21

What is detailed design?

Answer 21

Detailed design is a stage in the design process after conceptual design (and after preliminary or embodiment design), when specific details particular to the design are resolved.