52 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

Design Process and Evolving Phases

4

4.1 Introduction

Before starting to discuss the topic of engineering design—especially within the

context of mechanical engineering design—the authors would like to clarify that
this book is not solely about design or design processes, but rather a guiding book
for the senior design project course. Design project courses are commonly com-
pulsory in many post secondary engineering schools. As such, the focus of this
book revolves around the contents and approaches of teaching specific to such
courses. The senior design course requires the culmination of the student’s previous
design experience and engineering knowledge. By the time students take their
senior design course, they would have already taken other junior design course and
specialized core engineering courses as prerequisites. Some key questions related to
the design process course are discussed in detail during the senior design project.
These include: What is a Design? What are the measures of design quality? What
are the measures of design process effectiveness? How does a design process affect
cost, quality, and time to market? What are the phases of a product's life cycle?
What are the ten key features of design best practice that will lead to better
products? How are design problems different from analysis problems? Why is it
during design, the more you know, the less design freedom you have? What are the
six phases of the mechanical design process? What are the three prime sources for
new products? A great reference for additional information regarding the design
process is David Ullman’s “The Mechanical Design Process” (Ullman 2018).

Fig. 4.1 Course dependencies

At UA, the senior design course is numbered as MEC E 460. There are a number
of prerequisites for this course as shown in Fig. 4.1. Note that such dependencies
are in a hierarchical structure within different subject streams such as: mathematics,
solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, engineering analysis, and design. All prerequisite
course descriptions related to the senior design course have been listed in
Appendix T. More specifically, students are expected to have some previous design
experience from their second and third year design courses, e.g. MEC E 260 and
MEC E 360 at UA. In MEC E 260, Mechanical Design I, the following aspects of
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 51
Y. Ma and Y. Rong, Senior Design Projects in Mechanical Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85390-7_4
4.1 Introduction 53 54 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

are covered: design morphology, analysis and design of components, mechanical Table 4.1 ‘What determines quality?’ (McGraw-Hill 2002)
design with electric motors, computer-aided design introduction, design project 1989 2002
processes. In MEC E 360, Mechanical Design II, more advanced topics are covered Works as it should 4.99(1) 4.58 (1)
including: design procedures, theories of failure, material selection, design for Lasts a long time 4.75 (2) 193 (5)
fatigue, creep and relaxation, selection of gears and bearings and application of Is easy to maintain 4.65 (3) 3.29 (5)
computer-aided design software in design. Looks attractive 2.95 (4–5) 3.58 (3–4)
This chapter is intended to review some basic principles of design in the context Incorporates latest technology/features 2.95 (4–5) 3.58 (3–4)
of the senior design project course. The chapter highlights strategies to guide stu-
Scale 5 = very important, 1 = not important at all, brackets denote rank
dents through the design process and the project deliverable requirements. Sources Based on a survey of consumers published in Time, Nov. 13, 1989, and a survey based on
quality professional, R. Sebastianelli and N. Tamimi, “How Product Quality Dimensions Relate to
Defining Quality,” International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Vol. 19, No. ,
pp. 442–453, 2002
4.2 What is a Design?

Design is the process of creating something purposeful (either as hardware, soft- activities largely occur within the product development stage, product design has a
ware, or integrated products) through the application of knowledge in an innovative large influence in the later stages of a product’s lifecycle, i.e. production and
way. Better even, the design could have never existed before on the market. To delivery, product use, and end of life.
design is to create something new (original design 原始创新设计), to modify
existing things in a new way to satisfy a recognized need (configuration design
重构组合设计), or to find new solutions to an existing problem which have been
4.5 Design Process
previously solved in a different way (redesign 翻新设计). The ability to design is
both a science and an art. The science of design is learned through the technical
It has been estimated that 85% of the problems with new products—product
content covered in this and prerequisite technical courses. The art of design is
malfunctioning, lengthy production time, high production costs, etc.—are the result
rooted in innovation—a skill that is developed and honed through doing design
of weakness within the design process. Design is open-ended; there are multiple
work.
solutions to satisfy a particular design need and various design process paths that
can be taken to get to a final product (see Fig. 4.3). Design is also an iterative
process where concepts are created and improved over time. Iteration ensures the
4.3 Design (Product) Quality final product is the best solution to meet the original design intention. Over the
course of the design process, an engineer or designer apply their technical
As shown in Table 4.1, over 10 years ago, Americans were surveyed on what they knowledge to drive design concepts forward and refine them towards a final
thought were determining factors of product quality. Over 90% agreed on these product.
three factors: (1) The product works as it should (according to the measures of
product function); (2) The product lasts a long time; (3) The product is easy to
maintain.
4.6 Typical Mechanical Design Process

There are typically six key stages in product design, i.e. product discovery, project
4.4 Product Life Cycle definition and planning, specification and definition, conceptual design, product
development, product support (see Fig. 4.4).
Nowadays, a key focus of engineering and product design is to take product life-
cycle into consideration during the design process (Fig. 4.2). All stages of a product
lifecycle—from ideation and production to its usage and decommissioning (end of
product lifecycle)—should be considered in detail to understand their implications
on product design, on society and the environment; and ideally these multiple
aspects of the product should be concurrently considered. Although design
4.6 Typical Mechanical Design Process 55 56 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

(a)

(b)

Fig. 4.3 What do you get from this figure? The many results from the design process [Fig. 1.10
of (Ullman 2018)]

4.7 Why Study the Design Process?

Humans have been designing for over 5000 years and the products of design have
been seamlessly integrated into the world around us. The goal of design has always
been to make the lives of humans easier by increasing our work efficiency. The
products of mechanical engineering design, for example, are found in various forms
of machinery and industrial processes; they increase process efficiency by accel-
erating transportation, increasing the speed of production, or decreasing the effort
required to perform certain tasks. So why do we study the design process? The
design process is the backbone of design. It provides a structural basis for design
Fig. 4.2 Engineering activities involved in the stages of a product lifecycle. a The Decision flow while anchoring the progression of design concepts back the original design
making actions in generating engineering specifications [Fig. 4.6 of (Ullman 2018)]. b The life of need. A robust design process assures design outcomes meeting the continuous
a product [Fig. 4.8 of (Ullman 2018)] need for new, cost effective, high quality products. In product development, things
are complex require a team from many areas of expertise, but more people on the
team requires more communication and structure, and yet global marketplace
requires that new product be developed at a rapid pace. Such challenges can only be
addressed by a sound design process.
4.8 Concurrent Engineering 57 58 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

Fig. 4.4 Typical stages in a

product development process
[Fig. 5.13 of (Ullman 2018)]

Fig. 4.5 Stages of a product lifecycles and the associative activities when a product is designed [Figs. 1.1–1.5 of (Ullman 2018)]
4.8 Concurrent Engineering

Built into the design process is the need to manage people and information while
developing a design concept. Over the course of a product lifecycle, there are many
activities that are mutually associated due to their dependency on engineering
inputs or mutual constraints. The best approach that has been recognized as the best
practice is the implementation of ‘concurrent engineering’. Concurrent engineering
carries out engineering and manufacturing activities concurrently by the idea of
‘early engagement’. This requires the comprehensive design efforts for many other
aspects of a product in the downstream of its lifecycle to be considered all at once
instead of as consecutive design stages, i.e. ‘design for X’, where ‘X’ can be
manufacturing, marketing, maintenance, use, and end-of-life recycling and
remanufacturing. Figure 4.5 shows the detailed associations between the different
stages of design and visually depicts how concurrent engineering can be applied to
the design process.
The single, most common challenging aspect of the design process is commu-
nication. Traditionally, marketing, design, manufacturing, sales and technical
supports are the major business departs with distinguished roles, authorities and
protocols of communication. Engineering issues are only communicated by docu-
ments like memos or distribution file packages. Such engineering approach is also
4.8 Concurrent Engineering 59 60 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

Fig. 4.8 The portions of a

product’s cost pie [Fig. 2.3 of
(Ullman 2018)]

Fig. 4.6 The traditional ‘over-the-wall’ design method (poor design process) [Fig. 1.11 of
(Ullman 2018)]

known as ‘over the wall’ engineering as shown in Fig. 4.6. Many companies have
already realized that the ‘over the wall’ design engineering method (poor design
process) is no longer acceptable in the market.
Over the course of the design process, a design engineer’s knowledge of the
design problem is always inversely related to the freedom they have in designing a 4.9 Measures of the Effectiveness of the Design Process
solution. This relationship is visually depicted in Fig. 4.7. With time, more details
and design specifications are defined which, in turn, inform the progression of the Three key measures of design process effectiveness are quality, cost, and produc-
design concept moving forward in the design process downstream or within the other tion time. The best designs processes achieve high product quality while mini-
design aspects within a concurrent design process. More dependencies among design mizing cost and production time. Design costs can be divided into two
entities (e.g. specifications, modules, components, elements, features, parameters, subcategories: engineering cost and manufacturing costs. Engineering cost occur in
etc.) are created, design constraints become increasingly interdependent, which the design stage of product life cycle and are measured by the number of man-hours
narrows the scope of the design towards the final design concept. That is why the involved in the engineering activities. Manufacturing cost are the costs associated
design engineers have well known that the more time into design process, the more with the production of the final design. Manufacturing costs are related to the raw
knowledge about the design problem; then they recognize more design constraints, materials used in production, manufacturing processes and the production batch
so the less design freedom they have. size. Large scale production will yield a smaller cost per unit product produced.
The actual cost of product design is usually a small part of the total production
cost, however, the work done during the design phase directly influences the
Knowledge about resulting manufacturing cost during production. In other words, the design process
—although it contributes minimally to overall project costs in comparison to other
the design problem
aspects of product development—has the capacity to reduce the overall cost of
production. Figure 4.8 shows the distribution of total product cost amongst the
various production elements; the 5% allotted to design cost determines the quality
Percentag

of design and directly impacts the material and labor costs of manufacturing.

Design
freedom 4.10 Effect of Design Process on Cost

A never-ending cycle of design changes often makes it challenging to estimate and

control the price of the product. Sound familiar? Although it is important be
Time into design responsive to change requests from clients, the following factors should also be
considered prior to modifying the original design: the cost of making that change
Fig. 4.7 The trend of design knowledge, constraints over the time into design [Fig. 1.9 of
(Ullman 2018)]
4.10 Effect of Design Process on Cost 61 62 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

and the impact of that change on the manufacturing process. Without doing so, the Product
changes may set off later issues potentially putting the design engineer in the red. Definition Product
For instance, a change to the design could introduce a product at an unrealistically Design Process
high price point due to increased production costs. The modification could unin-
Design
tentionally make the product design too complex to manufacture and produce at the
required scale, or could effect the product profit margins the introduction of addi- Production
tional production costs. Design decisions influence the selection of raw materials, Product
manufacturing processes, and equipment required for production. Design decisions Improvement
also inform how product inventory is stored, and ultimately how product is dis-
tributed to customers (Manufacturing Hub 2020). Even though product design
happens earlier on and represents a smaller portion of overall business costs, it has
by far the largest impact on the product’s overall success.
Let’s look into the design process influence on manufacturing cost more closely.
Figure 4.9 shows that product costs are committed early in the design process; Low visibility High visibility
product cost is spent late in the later other engineering and manufacturing stages High Returns Low Returns
(Pradel 2019; Ullman 2018). This time difference is exactly the opportunity window
to do a great work in design to turn out a great product at a market acceptable cost. Fig. 4.10 Quality lever reproduced from (Nevil 2015). When do you add ‘Quality’ in the design
The engineering effort aimed to keep manufacturing cost under control by process?
accounting for various design factors—functionality, quality, energy efficiency,
recyclability, etc.—is referred to as ‘cost engineering’.

4.11 Effect of Design Process on Product Quality

It is import for students to understand that product quality is designed into a product
and cannot be added through manufacturing or post-manufacturing inspection.
Figure 4.10 gives an illustration depicting the impact of various factors on
enhancing product quality. The figure shows the cost spent in the product definition
stage can leverage the total manufacturing cost at a ratio of 1/1000, then product
design at 1/100, process design 1/10, and finally production 1/1. Product quality is
most effectively improved during product definition and design phases. During
product design, product quality is improved and verified through the use of various
engineering analyses. These are discussed in more details in Chaps. 6 and 7.

4.12 Effect of Design Process on Time to Market

It is common that product development involves a tight timeline. With the under-
standing that engineering design always involves many engineering changes before
a product concept is finalized, early design changes are always preferred. Early
Fig. 4.9 The cost committed versus the cost incurred over the time of product development changes require more engineering time spent on design but limit the need for
[Fig. 2.5 of (Ullman 2018)] additional changes past the product design phase.
4.12 Effect of Design Process on Time to Market 63 64 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

Refer to company B illustrated in Fig. 4.11, instead of addressing the necessary

design changes proactively during the design phase, it rushed towards production.
Their changes later in the design process were likely in direct response to issues in
the prototypes revealed through product testing and troubleshooting. Company B
spent more time from their “fire fighting” design change approach in comparison to
company A—who spent more time on design changes in the early stages of the
design phase. Then, looking into the cost aspect, as a result, company B incurred
additional costs in tooling and assembly line changes. There was also the possibility
that company B would need to recall their product which would further increase
costs and potentially cause consumers to lose confidence in the product. What is the
eventual results for both on market success? Company A’s product entered the
market earlier with high quality while company B struggled to get into the market
much latter with more problems to solve during their production, marketing and
after-sales. Company A was the winner.
Design engineers must recognize that today’s technology is changing rapidly
cannot hold out for lengthy production timelines. Products are constantly being
replaced with new ones and leading tech companies always racing to develop the
next “new thing” at a faster pace than their competition. Traditional design pro-
Fig. 4.11 Number of design changes made for two companies with different design philosophies cesses are not optimized to keep up with the demand for rapid design (TEFEN
[Fig. 1.6 of (Ullman 2018)]. Source Data from Tom Judd, Cognition Corp., “Taking DFSS to the 2020).
Next Level,” WCBF, Design for Six Sigma Conference, Las Vegas, June 2005 For rapid design, the ‘Design for X’ (DFX) process better suited in reducing the
product development time than the traditional design process. DFX differs from
traditional design processes in that it reduces the amount of rework through cross
Many typical case studies showed that on the effect of design changes made for functional collaboration during the design phases. This reduces workload, pro-
two companies—companies A and B—with different design philosophies the pat- duction costs, product maintenance costs, and increases product lifetime. Most
tern can be as shown in Fig. 4.11. Both companies released their design for pro- importantly, it reduces the time required for product production and subsequent
duction at the same time but company B was making design changes past the release onto the market. What does a DFX process look like? New project charters
design phase. start with identifying a compelling business need. As with other traditional design
Figure 4.11 shows the comparison between quality of design process and its processes, the DFX process begins with a project charter from leadership execu-
contribution to the number of design changes over time. Company A made more tives. As the name implies, different “X”s are general design criteria in different
changes than Company B in the earlier stages of the design. As a result, they were aspects that guide design progression through each phase of the design. Each “X”
able to explore more design alternatives. It is likely that Company A assigned many can be defined by a company to a specific aspect’s feature set or design criteria.
staff early in the product development cycle to explore a variety of design options. There are typically eight prevailing “X”s commonly used by engineers and
In contrast, Company B assigned a small number of staff to the earlier phases of designers are: (1) Manufacturability; (2) Assembly; (3) Perceived value; (4) Cost;
product development. In addition, the pressures of the production timeline further (5) Human factors; (6) Environmental factors; (7) Reliability; (8) Quality.
discouraged the exploration of alternative design options. However, change is
inherent to design and a large number of engineering changes are required to reach
the final design solution.
Inevitably, at each of the steps shown in Fig. 4.11, in the traditional design 4.13 Ten Key Design Best Practices
processes of both companies, there is a high risk of sending the product back up the
design funnel, due to misalignments and the lack of communication. This often Having clear processes for design and product development are essential. While
leads to delays in the production timeline and wasted resources spent on design design processes may be tailored to fit specific circumstances, the methodology for
reworking caused by the eternal tug-of-war between the siloes of functional teams, effective design remains the same. Working within the framework of a design
even missing the target of fulfilling the product development purposes. process that is clearly understood and agreed to by all members of the product
development team is more likely to produce better results in design deliverables
4.13 Ten Key Design Best Practices 65 66 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

6. Encourage the generation of multiple design concepts and thoroughly evaluate

all concepts
7. Be aware of the decision making process
8. Focus on introducing and maintaining product quality during each phase of the
design process
9. Develop the product design with its manufacturing process in mind
10. Practice effective communication! This means communicating the right infor-
mation to the right people at the right time.

4.14 Overall Design Project Process

The goal of a design project is typically to develop a new product or improve an

existing one. There are 9-steps within a general design process as shown in
Fig. 4.13: (1) Project planning; (2) Project definition; (3) Specification develop-
ment; (4) Conceptual design; (5) Detailed design; (6) Prototype manufacturing;
(7) Prototype testing; (8) Prototype design revision; (9) Production manufacturing.
These are further grouped into five phases, (1) project planning and defining phase
(Steps 1–3); (2) Concept design phase (Step 4); (3) Detail design and prototyping
Fig. 4.12 An illustrated product lifecycle management environment (Interactions Design phase (Steps 5–7); (4) Redesign and manufacturing preparation Phase (Step 8);
Foundation 2020) (5) Production phase (Step 9). Based on the established design best practices from
industry and concurrent engineering design approach championed by researchers,
Phases 1 and 2 are highly iterative due to the necessity to solidify design concepts
than those who came up with a design solution without following a formal design and their estimated costs to build the foundation for the later stages of product
process as shown in Fig. 4.12 (Interactions Design Foundation 2020). The design development. This approach has been well justified in many engineering design
team will, normally, have some input into these processes and be able to negotiate textbooks (Norton 2011; Ullman 2010). During Phase 3, prototyping effort and
modifications to processes that fail to produce optimal results. There is little control costs are added as design concepts become further developed. Phase 4 marks the
for the design team over the way other teams execute their processes, such as many rounds of calculations and analysis to verify if the design concept is viable. It
manufacturing, procurement and customer services. Failure in execution, from other also involves the implementation of design changes to further improve the design or
teams, is one of the few areas, where it is reasonable to say, that are completely to address any issues that may threaten design viability. Such efforts and costs are
outside of the design team’s control. well spent before the final design moves forward to production. As indicated in
To enhance the inter-departmental knowledge sharing and applications, Fig. 4.13, the iterative nature of design is observed throughout the product devel-
according to well-recognized industrial companies, there are ten key design best opment process and is shown to be especially intensive in the early phases. As
practices: discussed in Sect. 4.12, Such engineering cycles should take its due course and
never be rushed (in theory).
1. Design with the entire product lifecycle in mind (see Fig. 4.12)
Due to the workload and time constraints of a final year design course, the scope
2. Make full use of the design model by engaging the design team throughout the
of the course is limited to only steps 1–5 from Fig. 4.13, and while steps 6 and 7 are
stages of every product lifecycle, and support design team’s DFX exercises and
optional to design teams keen to attempt basic prototyping of their design. Steps 8–
design-change implementation
9 fall out of scope of the senior design course as the goal was not to develop a final
3. Implement organizational strategies that ensure improving the design processes
design for full scale production. The authors favor the design process as shown in
constantly is as important as improving the product
Fig. 1.3 of Chap. 1, framework and syllabus which is specifically tailored to the
4. Spend the time to form detailed plans for information-centric tasks, such as
design course. A more detailed project process chart recommended is shown in
design and manufacturing departmental/team interactions
Fig. 4.14 which was adopted from (Ullman 2010). A design project must start with
5. Careful development of product scope and design requirements
a project defining and planning phase. Some preliminary brainstorming questions
4.14 Overall Design Project Process 67 68 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

Fig. 4.14 Design project process adopted in senior design project course. An overview of the mechanical design and product support process [from
Final Report
proposal
Concept Report
proposal
Fig. 4.13 General product design process steps (Stout 2006–2012)

from the planning design phase include: What is the problem to be solved by the

Specification Report
project? What is the scope of the design? How much will it cost? How much risk is
involved? Then based on the judgement of the client’s management, a preliminary
project proposal could be documented, refined, approved, or cancelled.
Next, if the preliminary project proposal is given the tentative green light by the
client management, to substantiate the details about these questions, detailed
specifications (specs) are to be developed. At this stage, student project teams can
be engaged because although it would be nice to have design specs that are as
detailed as possible, the details within design specs are usually defined by the

Project proposal
design team. Based of their estimate of design feasibility, they create detailed,
quantifiable design specs that are acceptable to both the client and the design team.
These design specs, once approved by the client, form the backbone of the design
process moving forward.
Clearly, experience in the field of practice is necessary to teach the senior design
course, and there are potential risks of reality ignorance and student overloading.

Fig. 4.5 of [Ullman 2018)]

The overall project management principles and processes for the senior design
course are introduced in detail in Chap. 14 of this book. Once the design team has
been assigned a project, they begin organizing design tasks into phases, compile a
schedule of delivery, estimate the engineering costs associated with the entire
project. The design team then develops an engineering project proposal to the client
for their approval.
A key document required in the project engineering proposal is the specification
list, referred to as the specification matrix in this book. A rule of thumb regarding
specification matrices is as follows: Developing detailed and quantifiable specifi-
cations greatly reduces project risk and gives helps guide the design decisions
4.14 Overall Design Project Process 69 70 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

moving forward. During the design specification stage, a more systematic study on 4.16 Background Research for Product Discovery
the future product is conducted (product discovery), which aims to create a com-
plete technical description about the product. Thorough background research on a project allows for a design team to gain insight
into the relevant design standards and codes within product’s jurisdiction of use and
to learn about similar products that are already on the market. The most superficial
but yet effective and efficient means to do preliminary background research is
4.15 Product Discovery
through internet search engines with key words. For example, if a toy company
want to develop a toy robot, it can use Google to search related information with a
There are three types of product design projects: technology push, market-driven,
set of keywords, like ‘animated toy’, ‘walking robots’, ‘walking linkages’, ‘legged
and product change as shown in Fig. 4.15.
robots’, using them either individually or in combination. Another type of
The first type of product design is initiated by ‘technology push’. This is where
knowledge sources can be Wikipedia (百科), or other similar ones, e.g. (百度百科).
technology development makes an existing product technology obsolete in the
For consumer products, market study can gather information from local/online
foreseeable future without largescale design improvement matched with consumer
stores. Again, use toys as example, market surveyor could look into stores such as
demand. Such ‘technology push’ require large capital investment to transform the
Fisher Price, Toys R Us, Target, Walmart, etc. Video search engines like YouTube
ideas into a new product and carries high financial risk. Some of these projects can
are well accessible for beginners. Other sources of ideas include technical publi-
be sponsored by venture capital, or state/federal funding agency. The second and
cations, reference textbooks, or mechanism design references. Two notable design
most prevalent type of product design– making up approximately 80% of new
books are Shigley’s (Shigley et al. 2011) and Norton’s (2011) design books which
product development—is market-driven product design. In most companies, the
introduce design principles, machines element design and analysis methods.
sales and marketing departments see or project the need for certain products and
However, more serious research for a product should start with patent search.
prioritize product development to fit the demand in the market. These development
projects are directly in response to market competition and therefore are justified as
long as the demand exists in industry. The third type of product design is in
response to the need for improving product quality from product users to address 4.17 Accessing Patent Information
customer satisfaction.
Doing a patent search is another way to discover competing technologies already on
the market and mitigate the risk for patent infringement. Most universities have
subscriptions to online patent search licenses from world leading databases, such as
Technology Push US patent office (US Patent & Trademark Office 2020). ‘Google Patents’ is another
widely available search engine that takes the scanned images of patents available
form the USPTO and used optical character recognition to index the full text of the
Itemize projects patents (Google patents 2020). This is not as up to date as the USPTOs own
Market Pull collection and does not include published patent applications, however, it is still a
valuable source of patents over specific designs. Other product search engines such
as the LexisNexis legal research databases [both the Canadian (LexisNexis 2020
Product Change Canada) and American (LexisNexis 2020 US) versions] and U.S. Manual of
Classification include a database of Canadian and American patents within past
more than 50 years, searchable by full text.

Develop more To project

Choose 4.18 Conceptual Design
product ideas project planning

Following the approval of the project design proposal, the design project moves
into the conceptual design phase. During the conceptual design stage, different
Fig. 4.15 Types of design projects. Reproduced from Fig. 4.5 of (Ullman 2018) design concepts are discussed and evaluated. These concepts are then explored in
4.18 Conceptual Design 71 72 4 Design Process and Evolving Phases

more details through calculations and key technical analysis to evaluate the con- prototype development and testing for reliability, functionality, market acceptance
cepts’ pros and cons. The design concepts are then rated in the order of most to least and critical user feedback survey.
desirable in accordance with their ability to fulfill the specifications previously Note that all the prototyping stages are coupled with rounds of design changes or
defined in the specifications matrix. A design concept that best aligns with the enhancements in order to overcome discovered issues and address enhancement
design specifications is selected as the final design concept and presented to the requests. Usually concurrent engineering and collaboration with supply partners are
client for their approval. If the client finds the recommended concept is feasible, happening in this stage which enhance the product quality significantly.
well supported by preliminary technical analysis and in alignment with their design However, in the context of the senior design project course, detailed design,
needs, the client makes the decision to proceed for the next phase of the design prototyping, and testing are very much constrained by the amount of time available
process, detail design. during the course. The extent of detailed design done in a senior design course is
A note to students regarding the concept design phase in the context of real limited to detailed calculations, computer-based modeling, analysis, minor concept
world design—the client endorsement memorandum represents the client’s com- modifications, and some concept versioning iteration. Then the student teams will
mitment to the design. Any costs that were incurred prior to the endorsement be ready to complete a so called ‘final design report’ and to present their works on a
memorandum are unrelated to the client; the costs associated with conceptual dedicated design conference with a poster each and a series of programmed and
design are covered by the engineering design team. panel-judged presentation. Optionally, design awards (Capstone design awards) are
presented to outstanding teams and individuals.
Subject to time availability during the course and a team’s design progress,
rudimentary mock-up verification prototyping and testing could be carried out
4.19 Detail Design, Prototyping and Testing provided the on-campus or off-campus supporting resources could be made avail-
able. Any major redesign, prototyping and testing are unattainable for the timespan
Detail design involves the refinement and modification of the design concept to of a design course are omitted as a result.
achieve a finalized design that is ready to be manufactured. Ideally, during the detail Some clients choose to take up a design for additional development following
design stage, two major objectives must be achieved: (1) Theoretical verification the conclusion of the design course through research internships or technical
and redesign for functionality, (2) Product prototyping and testing. contracting positions. This gives the design team an opportunity to continue the
The theoretical objective is achieved through a principal evaluation of the design project and complete the design work up to certain maturity beyond the design
guided by the clients’ design requirements and the following foundational criteria: course.
design for safety, design for energy, design for customization, design for manu-
facturing, design for cost, design for quality, design for reliability, design for
recycling, etc. (As introduced in Sect. 4.12, in industrial R&D field, people refer
these aspects as ‘DFX’ collectively). During the theoretical verification of the 4.20 Summary
various foundational design criteria, certain aspects of the conceptual design may
require modification thus beginning a new round of conceptual design. Design The measures of good design are embedded within its functionality, longevity, and
iterations continue until the final design is fully satisfactory to the client’s design ease of operation and maintenance. The reasons that design activities are organized
requirements. around a sound design process are in four folds: (1) There are always needs for new
For the prototyping and testing objective, progressive prototyping and testing designs; (2) Communications between different parties of a design team has to be
procedure must be planned and executed. This objective is a secondary verification tracked and resolved; (3) Quality is built into the product with the design process;
of the design following the theoretical evaluation. Similar to the theoretical (4) A sound design process prevents errors before they occur. A design process
objective, modifications to the design informed by the results of prototyping and drives the realization of product cost, product quality, and time to market. The
testing are carried out iteratively. The prototyping and testing procedure can be design process has a large impact on the product cost but cost relatively little in the
divided into the following sub-phases: (1) Mock-up prototyping to verify general context of the entire product development. It is easier to improve product quality
functions; (2) Key mechanism performance testing for conceptual confirmation; during the earlier design stages. Majority of the product cost is defined early in the
(3) Full-scale mechanism performance and safety testing for detail design; (4) First design stage of product development process and spent later in the manufacturing
full product prototype development and performance testing; (5) Product manu- stage. Making changes in early design stages also helps to shorten the overall time
facturability and cost engineering prototyping and testing; (6) Alpha product pro- to market.
totype development and testing for user feedback survey; (7) Beta product
4.21 Example Project Discovery Assignment 73

4.21 Example Project Discovery Assignment

Background Research (Project Discovery). This is a group assignment about pro-

duct specifications (to be included in phase 1 report, i.e. project proposal) that is due
at the end of phase 1. Students are to submit the reports in groups by uploading
them to the course website. Activities are prescribed as follows:

• Search background information on walking robot toys

– Market information, price, sale volume etc.
– Information sources: patents, books, online/local stores (supermarkets,
ToysRus)
• Study three different walking robots (maximum one page each), for each of them
include
– Title: a name of the toy
– A sketch (handwritten or printed)
With major components identified (number them)
Material for each major component
– Brief description on how it functions, identify
Major features
Input, output motion
Actuator (type and number), power source (voltage, battery)
Linkage used, the degree of freedom
• Keep a copy of this document for future project reports.