Design
What is design?
A design is a plan for a product, system or environment or it may be a pattern or some form of decoration. A design is usually a variation of something that has been thought of or created before but sometimes a design is something completely new. When a design is something that no one has ever thought of before, it is called an invention.
Most of the designs that are created are not inventions, they are variations of existing designs and inventions.
For example, there are many designs for bicycles but they are all modifications of the original bicycle invention that had two wheels, a frame, a crank, chain and sprocket drive, lever steering, a saddle, etc.
Design is also an activity. To design is to create a plan for a product, system, environment, a pattern or some form of decoration.
Designing
The aim of designing is to come up with a solution to a problem or to devise something new, or better than already exists. At the simplest level, the first idea that is thought of is used as the solution.
A better solution is usually found if the first idea or design is improved by a process called design development.
Design development
Design development is a process where:
- We study a design, evaluate it and try to think of something that would make the design better.
- If we can think of something that would improve the design, we modify the design by making the changes that we thought of.
- We then study the modified design, evaluate it again and try to think of something else that would make it better.
- If we can think of something else that would improve the design, we modify the design by making the changes that we thought of.
This is a cyclic process that should continue until we cannot think of any possible way that the design could be improved any more.
A more professional way of designing is to think of alternatives to the first idea before choosing one to develop.
An even better way to start designing is to think of lots of ways that a problem could be solved and alternatives to each idea.
Example
Imagine that you had to design vandal proof seating for a school playground.
- Your first idea might be a wooden chair
- An alternative might be a wooden bench seat
- An alternative might be a back to back wooden bench seat
- Your second idea might be a steel chair
- An alternative might be a steel bench seat
- An alternative might be a circular steel bench seat
- Your third idea might be a plastic chair
- An alternative might be a folding plastic chair
- An alternative might be a plastic bench seat
Etc.
Design Strategies
Designs may be developed by thinking of how parts of the design may be made by:
- adding material to the original piece
- removing material from the original piece
- bending or twisting material
- reforming materials by casting, injection moulding, vacuum forming etc
- cutting up and rearranging material
- a combination of any of these processes.
Other design strategies include creating designs based on natural forms e.g. snail shells, leaves, wood bark, etc and using value analysis techniques to improve existing designs.