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> A car has 15,000 pieces. The notion of the Renaissance designer is
> routed in art
> and architecture. I believe that that model does not work in product
> design today at least.
I'm a touch hesitant about this example, because there is a strong and
increasingly successful body of work on automating much of the
"routine" aspects of engineering design. By "routine" I am referring
to items such as:
- material selection
- sizing and positioning of fasteners, etc.
- the shape of members
I find it difficult (which is likely more a reflection of my biases
than anything else) to see a lot of the "design" activities associated
with a car as being "real design". Once the parameters for the vehicle
are established (no easy task!), my feeling is than an awful lot of the
activity is routine; thus TRIZ and similar methods.
That said, there are production cars then there are concept cars. When
you're cut off from your base of precedents and established practices,
my feeling is that "design" suddenly re-enters the picture. At this
point I believe that a good "general designer" (in which I will include
the stereotypical Renaissance Designer), in conjunction with subject
matter experts, would be able to succeed. Unfortunately I don't know
of any practical way to test this belief, thus relegating it to the
non-scientific world :(
Jason
P.S. Are comparisons similar to that last one mentioned above exactly
what design research should be pursuing?
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