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Design' means different things to different people
a wallpaper pattern,
a fashionable dress,

the appearance of a racing car and so on.

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we need to 'design', particularly in an

engineering environment, and

we might best go about 'designing'.

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Ohe Concise Oxford Dictionary explains
design as
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Yvidently there is a lot more to design than mere visual aspects,

and design is not restricted to engineering.

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    implies that we design not for the
abstract mental exercise, but with a definite goal in view
- some action or some physical object (artefact) will
result from the design.
  suggests that design is a   
process.
When we design we deal primarily with ideas, with abstractions
rather than with numbers - and computers for example cannot
do the job for us, though they can help in certain tasks.

No matter what we design, it is vital that we develop and apply

our imagination to      
 the future form of
the action, how it will eventually come into being and most
importantly how it will thereafter interact with people and other
actions.
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  infers that design is distinct from
implementation. Designers especially in engineering
seldom execute their plans, but rather


them to others - either by word of mouth, or visually
(sketches, engineering drawings, computer
simulations &c), or through the written word. Again,
note the lack of emphasis on numbers

a   means just that, we are coming up with

something  - at least partly

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o, can we now define design completely?
 and neither do we need to.

A rigid definition implies a rigid process,

and design is anything but that. We shall
adopt the following interpretation as it
incorporates the above concepts and
conveys a reasonably clear idea of what
design is all about

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an a nutshell . . . . !"#a#
6 Ohere is a lot more to design than mere technical
calculations.
6 An incomplete design which does not take 

viewpoint into consideration is a recipe for trouble.
6 at is the designer's responsibility to seek out these
viewpoints
6 A solution must be close-to-optimum to start with, as
retrospective fixes are never wholly satisfactory.

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Design means .

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Design means .


 
 

    
  


 
   
 
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nherited qualities : we cannot all inherit Leonardo's genes, but read
on . . . .
|ethod : you can employ proven techniques to increase your
inventive prowess
ttitude : you must be positive, you  invent !
Xnowledge : your understanding of how related problems are solved
can be increased
ffort : Ydison (inventor of the light bulb) was spot-on when he
observed that

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iec / DoMY / Mi / Design of Oransmission ystems/Basics p
Conclusions . . .
Well, that's it ! You should now have the
fundamentals of designing under your belt. But
recall that knowing the fundamentals of anything
is pretty useless unless you can apply them
advantageously.
Design is no different - you've got to
practice application of the fundamentals,
particularly when the problem doesn't
seem to require any design process,
rudimentary or otherwise.

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2emember always that when you've got to

solve a real life problem, it's the

  

that you're looking for

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