Pre-Reading
Pre-Reading Activity
Discuss the following questions with a partner.
- How are designers and engineers similar?
- Which is more important: how something looks or how it functions?
- Discuss a product you use every day.
- What is its function? What parts or components make it useful?
- How is it an example of both design and engineering?
Reading 1: Introduction [1]
Introduction
Much of the world around you is designed in some way. Modern living relies on the products, systems and services created to support how we live. Design comes from the ability to think creatively – to be able to imagine ‘what if …?’ and come up with something that didn’t exist before.
Some of the greatest human achievements have come from creative design engineering, allowing the realization of some truly remarkable changes in our world. Design engineering has helped to transform the environment, create incredible super-structures on land and sea, and even helped people travel to, and live in, space (Figure 1).
At the same time, some of the smallest designs have enabled the biggest steps in the progress of humanity. The way people live has been changed by incremental advances in medicine, food production and many of the materials and devices people use on a daily basis (Figure 2).
Design engineering has also developed many of the most important systems and services on individual, global, and universal scales. These systems have supported the expansion of human activity in a huge range of areas (Figure 3).
Design can be the fashionable, eye-catching products and images you probably think of. But design can also be the least noticeable (and often most important) services and systems. This chapter will introduce you to some characteristics and drivers for design, some of which you might not have come across before, and start to explore how data can be used to inform design decisions.
This chapter looks at the way in which engineers use design ideas and design thinking to inform their work. The complexity that people bring to design problems is introduced, along with some basic methods of dealing with such complexity.
Reading Comprehension
Read the statements. Put T for True or F for False. If the statement is false, correct the error to make the statement true.
- ______ Engineers always need to work with designers to be successful.
- ______ Design engineering is visible in our everyday lives.
- ______ Small innovations contribute to solving the world’s problems.
- ______ Design needs to be fashionable and beautiful.
Answer the questions in your own words.
- What do you think design engineering is?
- What was the purpose of this reading?
- Look at the Velcro example in Figure 2. How does it represent the cross-section of design and engineering?
- Explain one other contribution from the field of design engineering.
- What is a designed system?
- What will the next few readings from this chapter on design engineering discuss?
Vocabulary Practice
Complete the sentences