Rethinking Design: The Formal Integration of Engineering Innovation Into a Design Process

Abstract

Innovation has been a hallmark of progress throughout human history. There are many innovative products that have had a tremendous impact on mankind’s quality of life. As engineering design matures into a field defined by scientific principles, there is a need for guidelines to help the designer select and apply appropriate tools and methods to support the development of innovative products. There has been significant work developing design methods to support the development of innovative products. There has been significant work developing design methods to support the development of innovative products as well as to understand the characteristics of the innovative products. Many of these methods however present themselves as a unique solution to develop innovative products but fail to fully define innovation. Furthermore, few guidelines are provided to the designer as to when to use the available tools with respect to the market dynamics, making the use of these methods sometimes ineffective. With a general push for US companies to become increasingly more innovative, it is important more than ever to understand and situate innovation in design practices in order to promote successful and consistent development of innovative products. This paper proposes a set of new “innovation for engineers” guidelines that are defined and used along existing engineering design theory and cyberinfrastructure design tools in a design process.