Dave Asbury - Engineering Design Portfolio
Personal Design Process
As this section has migrated to my design handbook, most of this section has been removed. A much more detailed version of my design process exists within my design handbook, and can be found at the top right corner of this page. This page will provide an overview of my design process taken from the first page of the handbook for when my personal design process is mentioned elsewhere on the portfolio.
My design process can be cyclical: in the case that the final outcome isn't satisfactory, it is to be re-iterated until there is nothing more to be desired. The design process is depicted below:
Understanding the problem: Designer does necessary research to understand the problem. Should include stakeholder interaction if possible.
Establishing Requirements: Designer frames the problem by imposing engineering design requirements to the design problem. May include stakeholder interaction to help set requirements.
Diverging: Designer thinks of various approaches to solving the problem. The designer May be aided by the use of ideation tools.
Converging: Designer narrows down plethora of various approaches established earlier by using decision making tools.
Prototyping: Designer creates higher fidelidy prototypes to further communicate the design and make it less conceptual and more tangible.
Refinement: Final stages of the design. Design is assessed by stakeholders to ensure satisfactory, and designer makes any necessary changes. Designer performs a critical assessment of design to make sure it fully meets requirements.
On iteration: Orange arrows in the above diagram represent possible iteration paths. Based on the quality of the design at the current stage, the designer may deem it necessary to repeat earlier stages in the process. This iterative process can be repeated any number of times until the final product is at an acceptable level.