What Does Engineering Design Mean to Me
To the reader, I have included what Engineering Design means to me. Everyone will have their own personal definition, but hopefully this shed some perspective and explain why I put such importance on some areas in Engineering Design Model.
My first encounter with the term Engineering Design happened in a course called Praxis in the first week of my first semester of my first year of Engineering Science at the University of Toronto. We were assigned to come up with a definition for the word. It was a word I had never heard before, so naturally, my first reaction was to google it. I soon realized there was no specific definition of the word and we had to come up with our own unique definition. I began breaking down what engineering means and what design means to me. My initial reaction to engineering was that it was something that is cutting edge and uses advanced science or math. I thought design meant simply product that has been created for commercial use. Combining these two definitions, I came up with "Engineering Design is using sophisticated scientific principles in order to solve a problem".
I ran into a problem with this definition. When using it to define what is Engineering Design, it causes convoluted, ridiculous ideas that use complex technology instead of more intuitive and simpler designs to be rated higher as to their Engineering Design. I further worked on this definition, changing phrases and words and then testing out the definition on items and products I would consider to exhibit Engineering Design. I finally came up with: "Engineering Design is to approach a problem with a rational and logical mindset". I don't believe that for something to exemplify Engineering Design, that it must be scientifically complex. Rather, it must be something that has been considered from all angles and aspects, including the scientifically advanced one, and then be chosen as the best option from among the different designs.
An example illustrating this is in Praxis 2. My team designed a "card game" to help Senior Anomic Aphasia patients improve their communication abilities. I will argue with whomever that despite the lack of "technological sophsitication" it is a work of Engineering Design. Many different solutions were considered but the simple intuitive solution of a card based game was the solution that best met the problem. Research was put into size of cards, size of font, typeset of font, type of paper, lamination, etc. While not as intuitively clear as Engineering Design, this is as much Engineering Design as any other product considered. We approached the problem with a "rational and logical mindset" and through following that decision, this was the chosen design.