Integrating Information into the Engineering Design Process

PREFACE

Our goal in creating this book was to develop something unique—to fill a gap in the resources available to engineering faculty and engineering librarians. There is a singular absence of practical advice on how to apply information literacy concepts in the domain of engineering education. For a number of years, faculty in the Libraries and in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University have been collaborating to help first-year engineering students make more informed design decisions—decisions based on wise use of available information sources. Both engineering educators and librarians understand that novice engineering students tend to make quick decisions about what approach to take to solve a problem, then spend a lot of time developing prototypes and finishing details, when they might have saved a lot of effort and created a superior outcome had they spent more time upfront attempting to understand the problem more fully and thinking more broadly about potential solutions before actually working to implement one.

Furthermore, many engineering students seem to believe that everything needs to be done from first principles. They waste an inordinate amount of time trying to redesign a widget that is already cheaply and readily available commercially, and often spend months designing a new device, only to find out that something remarkably similar had already been patented years ago. This well-intentioned but wasted effort can be mitigated by helping engineering students adopt a more informed approach to engineering design. To date there has not been a systematic effort to develop such a model that resonates with both engineers and librarians. This book was conceived to meet that need.

Librarians and engineering educators each hold a piece of the puzzle in developing an integrated, informed learning approach, and this book is written for both audiences, as a way to bridge the gaps in conceptualization and terminology between the two important disciplines. Librarians specialize in the organization and application of information, while engineers understand not only the practice of engineering design, but also how students learn and what cognitive barriers they may have to adopting new concepts and ways of knowing. Over the past few years, the Colleges of Engineering and Technology at Purdue have, collaboratively with the engineering librarians, developed first-year courses that substantively integrate information literacy into their design activities. Our experiences in this integrated and synergistic approach are what we have endeavored to capture in this book.

We, the editors, developed and tested the central organizing principle of this book, the Information-Rich Engineering Design (I-RED) model, as the framework for integrating information literacy into a capstone design course, IDE 48500, Multidisciplinary Engineering, as part of the Multidisciplinary Engineering program at Purdue.

We approach the creation of this book as a design activity itself. A team of engineering educators, engineering librarians, and communications experts was assembled and a first prototype of the book was created at a two-day workshop held at Purdue University in September 2012. This event afforded a unique opportunity for the contributors to make suggestions about their and each other’s chapters and for clarifying what content should be located in which chapter. Over the course of the writing, we also had the chance to try out each other’s techniques in the classroom, providing additional feedback on the effectiveness of different activities. The result, we hope, is that even though this work was written by a collection of individual authors, both engineers and librarians, it will read as a collective, integrated whole.

Truly, it has been a pleasure to work with all the talented writers and thinkers who devoted their time to this book. We had many excellent conversations, and we, the editors, know our teaching practice has improved greatly from the exchange of ideas over the course of the writing.

INTRODUCTION

This handbook is structured in three distinct parts. Chapters 1 through 3 assemble key concepts about information literacy, engineering design and how engineers use information. These chapters draw on the relevant bodies of literature and are written in a scholarly style. Specifically, Chapter 1 views the engineering design process from several quite different perspectives. The goal is not to settle on a preferred model of design but to identify generic characteristics that are common to most normative descriptions of how design is done. Chapter 2 is an overview of concepts and definitions in information literacy, and Chapter 3 provides some evidence of what practicing engineers and engineering students actually do when carrying out design activities. Chapter 4, the final chapter in Part I, presents the pivotal idea of this book, the Information-Rich Engineering Design (I-RED) model. This model synthesizes concepts from the first three chapters to create a generic model of the elemental activities in engineering design and the corresponding information-seeking and -creating activities.

Part II, Chapters 5 through 14, provides specific practical advice and tools on how students can be guided in learning to manage and integrate information based on each phase of a design project, from conception to realization, based on the elements in the I-RED model. This includes addressing ethical considerations (Chapter 5) and team and knowledge management decisions (Chapter 6), problem scoping through eliciting user feedback (Chapter 7), gathering background information about the project (Chapter 8), and investigating professional best practices (Chapter 9). It also includes investigating prior art (Chapter 10), evaluating the quality of information and incorporating it to making evidence-based design decisions (Chapter 11), actually searching out materials and components to embody the design concept (Chapter 12), and organizing and documenting evidence so that a convincing argument can be made to support the design concept (Chapter 13). Finally, in order for students (and their organization) to benefit most fully from the design experience, they must reflect on the process and identify lessons learned and opportunities to improve processes (Chapter 14). This material is broken out by stage of the design process most relevant for the information activities to enable engineering educators and engineering librarians to support students as they learn to use information effectively as an integral part of doing design. Part III, Chapter 15, offers guidance on how to prepare students to incorporate information into engineering-related decision-making activities as a precursor to full-on informed design projects and how to assess student learning outcomes.

A particular feature of this handbook is that each chapter begins with a list of expected learning outcomes. This approach reflects good pedagogical practice and is intended to explicitly orient readers at the outset to the things they should be able to do after actively engaging with the content of each chapter. The best way for readers to accomplish the learning objectives is to go beyond just reading the material and to experiment with it in their own educational practice and to use the suggested reading lists to explore the topics covered more broadly. Figure I.1 provides a conceptual roadmap for this handbook.

FIGURE I.1 Roadmap for this handbook.

Throughout this book the term design is used intentionally as a verb (the action of designing) rather than as a noun (the outcome of that action). This was done to emphasize the fact that design is an activity, a process, rather than a product. This distinction is made not only to avoid confusion but also to highlight the creative and imaginative act of design. This focus on the act of design is reflected in the choice of verb-noun chapter titles in Parts II and III.

The contents of this handbook can be used to embed information literacy in a standalone design course such as an introduction to engineering project course in the first-year or a capstone design experience. Equally, the tools and techniques presented can be deployed throughout a year-on-year design sequence, from first year to final year. This latter application enables increasingly sophisticated knowledge and skills about the use of information in design to be developed and reinforced over an extended period.

The types of design information referred to are not limited to the obvious sources such as materials selection data, commercial off-the-shelf components and products, patents, and other archived text-based materials that are usually associated with design work. On the contrary, this book strives to include the broadest possible range of types of design information which are gathered in diverse ways and stored in many forms of media. For example, it includes information gathered from the clients and users through interviews and observation and from the literature on local demographics, sociopolitical factors, culture, and geography. Such information might be in the form of field notes, sketches, photographs, videos, maps, statistical data, and so forth.

Design information is also taken as being embedded in physical objects, such as existing artifacts of all types, and physical and virtual prototypes made during the design process to test ideas, as well as resultant components, products, or systems. Similarly, software used in, or resulting from, a design project contains design information. This includes the database of information from the design project itself.

A central tenet of this book is that design is a learning activity whereby existing information is consumed and new information is created. In the process, new knowledge is constructed by each of the parties involved—the client, users, and other stakeholders, members of the design team, and people involved in the final realization of the design solution, as well as others who come in contact with the design solution throughout its life cycle.

Throughout this handbook we have endeavored to keep the tone informal and readable and, ultimately, practical. If we have succeeded, readers should be able to incorporate new activities into their courses that encourage students to take a more informed approach to their design projects, which will then lead to more grounded, practical, and higher quality solutions.

In order to keep this book current, we are maintaining an online site (http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/ired) with materials and suggestions for using the I-RED model.

PART I

Information-Rich Engineering Design

CHAPTER 1

MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES ON ENGINEERING DESIGN

David Radcliffe, Purdue University

Learning Objectives

So that you can provide students with a robust and holistic appreciation for the engineering design process, upon reading this chapter you should be able to

• Describe the act of engineering design from multiple perspectives: as a process, as critical thinking, as learning, and as a lived experience

• Articulate major factors that lead to successful engineering design

INTRODUCTION

Design is a defining characteristic of engineering. Theodore von Kármán, the Hungarianborn physicist and engineer, is reputed to have said, Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that never has been. Engineers share this creative endeavor with many other design professionals, ranging from fashion and graphic designers to architectural and industrial designers. While engineers and engineering educators often define engineers as problem solvers, this epithet fails to adequately capture the full richness of what it is to engineer (Holt et al., 1985).

Engineering design is a recursive activity that results in artifacts—physical or virtual. These may be new to the world or simply variants on already existing things. Design involves both the use of existing information and knowledge and the generation of new information and knowledge. For engineers, designing is both a creative and a disciplined process. Design requires leaps of the imagination, intuitive insight, the synthesis of different ideas, and empathy with people who come in contact with any new product, system or process that is designed. Yet it also demands careful attention to detail, knowledge of scientific principles, the ability to model complex systems, judgment, a good understanding of how things can be made, and the ability to work under severe time constraints and with incomplete information and limited resources.

For engineers, design is an interdisciplinary undertaking. The variety of disciplines involved extend beyond branches of engineering and can include people with backgrounds in the liberal arts and humanities, as well as other technical disciplines from the biological and the physical sciences.

Design is learned by doing and reflecting. It is not formulaic; it is an art rather than a science.

In the literature the term design is used to describe both the act of designing and the resulting artifact (product, system, or service) or the information that fully describes it. To avoid possible confusion, in this handbook we use design to describe the action (as a verb), not the outcome (as a noun) (Ullman, 2009).

WAYS TO THINK AND TALK ABOUT ENGINEERING DESIGN

There is no universally agreed upon way to describe the engineering design process. Textbooks on engineering design typically include some form of model that sets out the process as a series of steps or stages with feedback loops and iteration (Dym & Little, 2004). Some of these models attempt to describe the various stages in a general sense, while others are more prescriptive and give considerable detail about the various activities to be undertaken and in what order (Cross, 2008).

Descriptive and Prescriptive Models of Engineering Design

Both descriptive and prescriptive models of engineering design embody a sense of flow or progression, typically shown as a series of steps or stages from top to bottom of the diagram depicting the model. They usually begin with a process of need finding and/or problem analysis and clarification, move to the generation of concepts and then the selection of a preferred concept, followed by the fleshing out or embodiment of this preferred concept into a preliminary solution which in turn is developed into a detailed solution. At each sequential stage, more is known about the artifact being designed; it is much more defined, meaning we have more information about it. This movement or progression through the stages is accomplished by feedback and iteration, as new information causes earlier information to be updated with consequential development of the ideas and information defining the artifact.

Figure 1.1 depicts a typical descriptive model of the engineering design process (French, 1971). The circles represent the information known before and after every stage. This may be in a wide variety of formats: text, drawings, sketches, photographs, moving images, physical models, prototypes or mock-ups, physical artifacts, or computer models and/or simulations. The rectangles represent actions or process steps, each of which have information as inputs and in turn result in new information, often in quite different formats. The lines and arrows indicate the flow of information including feedback to previous process steps, indicating the iterative or recursive nature of design.

FIGURE 1.1 Descriptive model of design. (Modified from French, 1971.)

Descriptive models present a general overview of a design process without going into many details. The purpose is to give a sense of the major milestones or stages. This type of model is used in most engineering design textbooks in the North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries whose education is in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. In contrast, the tradition in part of Europe is to teach prescriptive design methodologies. While this tradition goes back nearly a century it is only in the past 20 years that prescriptive models have become widely discussed in the English-speaking world.

Emblematic of this prescriptive approach is the classic text by Pahl and Beitz (1996). As illustrated in Figure 1.2, the broad stages of design—for example, clarify the task or conceptual design—are indicated on the right-hand side of the model. Each stage is broken down into a set of discrete tasks as listed in the rectangular boxes. Each stage takes in information from the preceding one, creates additional information, and in turn provides this to the subsequent stage. These sets of information are shown in the boxes with the pointed ends. The iteration is indicated by the upgrade and improve band and the horizontal arrowed lines. Information flows are explicitly indicated by the dotted line on the left-hand side of the diagram.

FIGURE 1.2 Prescriptive model of design. (Modified from Pahl & Beitz, 1996.)

While this model looks superficially similar to a descriptive model, there is much more detail, including the step-by-step list of design tasks. Moreover, this diagram is only a high-level summary. Pahl and Beitz (1996) and similar textbooks devote whole chapters to each stage and go into considerable detail in setting out how each task should be carried out and the sorts of design techniques that are most appropriate to accomplish each task. For instance, the conceptual design phase has five steps in this high-level model: (1) identify essential problems; (2) establish function structures; (3) search for solution principles; (4) combine and firm up the concept variants; and (5) evaluate against technical and economic criteria. However, in the detailed model of conceptual design, each of these expands to several sub-tasks. Further, the level of detail and specificity around topics like conceptual design, solution principles, and the principles of embodiment design is much higher than that found in a traditional engineering design textbook used in North America, where there is much more emphasis on component design (machine elements in mechanical design). That said, there has been a trend in recent years to incorporate more system-level and systematic design ideas in many engineering design textbooks.

Design as a Learning Activity

An alternative way to think about the engineering design process is as a learning activity. Learning is effectively a change in our state of knowledge or understanding. As previously mentioned, design is inherently an iterative process during which information is consumed and new information and knowledge about the task and/or the prospective product, system, or service being designed is acquired by the design team. As they progress through a project, design team members continuously learn more and more. In its most fundamental form this comes down to the team’s having ideas which are tested or validated by an appropriate means. Often testing of their ideas produces outcomes that were not as originally anticipated. As the team interprets and reflects upon the results of these tests, such dissonance causes them to learn something new about the project. This is illustrated in Figure 1.3.

FIGURE 1.3 Idea-test-learn model of design.

This idea-test cycle is repeated at every stage of a design project from clarifying the task all the way through to documenting and communicating the final, complete description of the product, system, or service created. At each of these project stages the sources of ideas and the means of arriving at them may vary greatly. Figure 1.3 indicates only a few of the possible idea generation strategies.

Having neat ideas is not sufficient; they must be put to the test to see if they perform as imagined. This requires the team to act on the ideas in a way that will subject the ideas to scrutiny in a way that will assess their veracity. As with idea generation, testing takes place in varying degrees throughout the design project. This can be something as simple as a thought experiment or a simple prototype made from bits and pieces at hand all the way up to, say, the flight-testing of a new concept of aircraft. Types of testing can include modeling and analysis, simulations, physical mock-ups, working prototypes of subsystems or assemblies, or early prototypes. The design thinking movement espouses that the prototyping of ideas be done early and often (Brown, 2009). This accelerates the learning process by going through a large number of idea-test-learn cycles in a short period of time.

Similarly, it is not sufficient to merely test an idea or a system; the findings have to be reflected upon critically so as to extract the deep and lasting lessons to be learned. This is not as easy as it sounds. It takes a disciplined approach and an inquiring, sometimes skeptical mind. The learnings need be captured, kept, communicated, and acted upon as appropriate throughout the remainder of the project. Some of this knowledge may be vital across the whole life cycle of the artifact being designed.

Design as Critical Thinking

Engineering design is not an exact science that has single, absolute, immutable answers. Rather it is a situated and contingent activity. Engineers have to develop the confidence and the courage to make professional judgments on the basis of evidence and argument. They have to be able to make tough calls that can literally have life and death consequences and be prepared to live with those consequences. This requires critical thinking of the first order.

Even if a prescribed methodology is adopted, the design process requires engineers to make simplifying assumptions so that the creative work can proceed. They must step from the physical world, where the laws of nature apply, to the model world, where it is not possible to simulate every aspect of the behavior of even an ideal system. Subsequently, engineers make critical decisions on the basis of these assumptions and incomplete information. The availability of design information is limited by many factors, including available time, finite human resources, gaps in knowledge (especially in cutting edge projects), ready access to timely and up-to-date information, and the ability to adequately communicate what is known. This cycle is depicted in Figure 1.4.

FIGURE 1.4 Design assumptions and decisions.

Design as critical thinking depends upon the team’s ability to model the prospective performance of proposed concepts and systems using prototyping and simulation. While the level of sophistication and completeness and hence veracity of such modeling and simulation continues to improve, models are only ever an approximation to reality. This is due to a combination of our ability to fully describe how complex technical, let alone sociotechnical, systems behave and the uncertainty in the values of the properties of the components. Professional judgment is required to both create models and to interpret their outputs. So while many of the tools and techniques that engineers use when designing are powerful and precise and rely on scientific knowledge, the overall design process does not have these characteristics. The engineering design process does not have the predictive certainty of science.

Design as Lived Experience

Engineering design is a social activity (Brereton, Cannon, Mabogunje, & Liefer, 1997)—a deeply human activity (Petroski, 1982). While it may be concerned with technological artifacts and knowledge, it is carried out by people, typically from diverse disciplines, working in teams. A number of researchers have studied the human act of designing in fields including engineering (Bucciarelli, 1996) and architecture (Cuff, 1992), complete with the frailties and ambiguity inherent in language and human discourse.

A recent study of designers (Daly, Adams, & Bodner, 2012) working in diverse fields from engineering to instructional design and fashion design used phenomenography to discover the variety of ways in which designers experience design. The findings are summarized in Table 1.1. The respondents experienced design in one of six broad ways, each characterized by a word or phrase (e.g., evidence-based decision making). The researchers describe each of these six different ways of experiencing design in terms of a short description expressed as design is …. From the top to the bottom of Table 1.1, there is a progression in the way that design is experienced: from a bounded, procedural experience toward a more unbounded, emergent, learning, and meaning-making experience.

TABLE 1.1 The Variety of Ways That Design Is Experienced