Design

To design is either to formulate a plan for the satisfaction of a specified need or to solve a problem. If the plan results in the creation of something having a physical reality, then the product must be functional, safe, reliable, competitive, usable, manufacturable, and marketable.

Design is an innovative and highly iterative process. It is also a decision-making process. Decisions sometimes have to be made with too little information, occasionally with just the right amount of information, or with an excess of partially contradictory information. Decisions are sometimes made tentatively, with the right reserved to adjust as more becomes known. The point is that the engineering designer has to be personally comfortable with a decision-making, problem-solving role.

Design is a communication-intensive activity in which both words and pictures are used, and written and oral forms are employed. Engineers have to communicate effectively and work with people of many disciplines. These are important skills, and an engineer’s success depends on them.

A designer’s personal resources of creativeness, communicative ability, and problem solving skill are intertwined with knowledge of technology and first principles. Engineering tools (such as mathematics, statistics, computers, graphics, and languages) are combined to produce a plan that, when carried out, produces a product that is functional, safe, reliable, competitive, usable, manufacturable, and marketable, regardless of who builds it or who uses it.