This module is intended for junior engineering students in any discipline. The module can be downloaded as a PDF file.

Teaching concept evaluation in engineering often utilises engineering based problems. Unfortunately, first year students typically lack the experience and familiarity with the range of engineering methods and topics that are a prerequisite for the introduction of the traditional design process. To compensate for this, many problems tend to be comprised of clear, theoretically based textbook problems centered on formulaic manipulation. As such, these “tame” problems rely on will traveled solution paths that always end up with the same answer providing little value in highlighting the benefit of the traditional design process.

To appreciate the design process it is necessary for students to attack problems where there is no identifiable solution path or where they have no concept of what the answer might be. The problems need to encourage students to nurture their synthesis skills (i.e. their ability to bring together different points of view) rather than their analysis skills, which are already nurtured in the rest of their curriculum. These “wicked” problems are difficult to introduce at the first year level as the students typically lack adequate engineering experience. However, “wicked” problems can still be explored by utilizing the knowledge students have already developed simply to function in the world around them.

Problems that require the understanding of consumer behaviour or moral judgment can easily form “wicked” problems that first-year students can tackle. Therefore, this module consists of two non-engineering problems that provide a solid foundation for concept evaluation. The first is a marketing problem that deals with the survival of small drug stores in the 21st century. The second is a legal problem that requires students to make a moral judgment. To extend concept evaluation further into the traditional models, a new method of introducing design reviews and traditional engineering concept evaluation tools are included. To introduce traditional engineering concept evaluation tools, questions that relate the drug store and legal cases to these tools are introduced.

[Description and screenshot taken from the wiki page for this module. Materials are used under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.]

These three modules are intended to provide the student and the instructor with a framework for learning and teaching the “fuzzy front end” of the product development process. Modules are downloaded as PDF files.

The first module introduces the value of successful design to the company, the notion that product design is a risk-management process, the formation of an effective design team and an introduction to the five stages of design.

The second module presents the idea generation stage of the design process. This stage is largely an introduction to marketing, but it is essential to the design engineer because it connects the customer to the engineer’s design process.

Techniques and procedures for identifying, quantifying and assessing market needs and wants, determining the attributes required and desired, estimating market size and the impact of attributes on size, determining necessary functions, and establishing the engineering characteristics of any product that addresses identified needs are introduced. Attribute sensitivity functions and the House of Quality in QFD are presented with practical exercises. The notions of wants, needs, attributes, characteristics, requirements, constraints and specifications are defined. The latter part of idea generation is concerned with finding individual concepts that provide the attributes necessary to meet the needs of the identified market segment. No attempt is made to integrate these concepts into a product because in this stage, possible solutions and not best solutions, are sought. At the end of this stage, concepts are screened using Pugh’s concept screening tool. The module is intended for two weeks of classroom instruction in conjunction with two laboratory sessions, two assignments and a two-week project. The module is intended for 2nd year engineering students. While this material has been taught to 2nd year E&CE students, this module is intended for students in all disciplines.

The third module is presents conceptual design, the second stage of the design process. In this stage, the previously defined concepts are combined, modified, refined and integrated into a sensible, concept-level design or configuration of the product. The module presents various tools for conceptual design including morphological charts, concept sketching, process flow diagrams and others. The conceptual design stage culminates in concept scoring to find the best combination of concepts to take forward to the next design stage.

The three modules are accompanied by selected cases for case-based teaching, assignment problems and laboratory sessions. The modules have numerous examples throughout.

[Description and screenshot taken from the wiki page for this module. Materials are used under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.]