The conceptual design phase

This is one of the SEED Curriculum for Design: Preparation Material for Design Teaching reports. These reports provide an integrated series of preparation material for design teaching. SEED (Sharing Experience in Engineering Design) is an organisation of teachers of design in tertiary education.

This document forms part of the SEED curriculum development series of publications and is principally intended for use by teachers and lecturers in engineering design in the preparation of teaching material for the topic of conceptual design. Conceptual design is a key phase of the design process. It is during this stage that the product concept which will eventually be taken forward to manufacture is formulated and selected. The thoroughness with which this activity is carried out significantly influences the quality of the final product and, as a consequence, its eventual success or failure. In practice, the resources put into conceptual design are often inadequate. It is necessary, therefore, to impress upon students not only the importance of the phase but also the approach required to achieve a robust concept.

This document addresses a strategy for the teaching of conceptual design rather than the specific procedures involved in the conceptual design of a product. The message it aims to present is equally applicable to mechanical, electrical, civil and other engineering disciplines. Consequently, the term “product” as used though out the document should be interpreted as referring to buildings, processes, systems, circuits etc. as well as consumer and industrial artefacts. Similarly, “manufacturing” should be interpreted as also referring to construction.

The report provides an introduction, topic definition, rationale, educational aims and objectives and chapters on the conceptual design curriculum, teaching and assessment of conceptual design and a bibliography and references.

[Description and screenshot taken from the SEED Curriculum for Engineering Design page for this report. (c) The Design Society used under the terms of their (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.]

Link: http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/teachers/curriculum/conc/conchome.html
Author: Bill Ion; Douglas Smith
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Rights: Copyright 2011 The Design Society - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. See http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/teachers/curriculum/about.html