ECE361
Engineering Practice
Brainstorming, Trades and
the Design Process
Session 6
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Product Design Specifications
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Conceptual Design
The PDS establishes what the system must do,
but the implementation details need to be
established separately
The conceptual design process is where this takes
place, through the:
• Generation of alternative solutions, and the
• Evaluation of alternatives to choose the “best”
solution
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Design Process Assures Design
will meet Requirements
Stage 1 – Problem
Definition & Potential
Solutions
Stage 2 – Design
Stage 3 – Verification
Requirements
Specification
Brainstorming
Trades
Preliminary
Design
Requirements
vs. Capabilities
Detailed
Design Review
Implementation
Testing
Reporting
This process is part of what
we call Systems Engineering
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Deliver = $$$
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Generating & Evaluating Ideas
• Individuals generate the most and best concepts
(though often the stimulation for the ideas comes
from others)
• Groups are better at generating selection criteria
• Groups are also better at evaluating concepts and
enhancing them
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Ideation Process I
• The environment must be comfortable, light and airy,
plenty of wall space, suitable for team members to work
in comfort with access to information sources
• Provide paper, white boards, post-its, and note cards for
presenting and preserving ideas
• Communication of ideas in all forms – textual, verbal,
diagrammatic, and graphical presentation of ideas is of
great importance
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Ideation Process II
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Absolutely no judgment of a concept until the group
has run out of ideas
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No idea is discarded at this stage
Everyone participates equally
Selection process of concepts should not inhibit
creativity of new ideas that might emerge
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Generation of evaluation criteria from the PDS
elements is a group activity
Group evaluates each idea using evaluation criteria
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Absolutely no “gut feeling” decision making; past experiences
are just as likely to be wrong as right in new situations
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Ideation Techniques
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Analogy – A shift register transports values as
in a bucket brigade
Brainstorming – Use a brick for a door stop.
Inversion – Change roles, move the print head
rather than the paper
Attribute Listing – Size, weight, strength, color,
material, shape
Checklist – Adapt, modify, magnify, minimize,
substitute, rearrange, reverse, combine
Affinity Process – See charts below
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The Affinity Process
• Why?
– Breakthrough in traditional concepts is needed
– Support for solution is essential for implementation
• Schedule
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Ideation: 10 minutes
Grouping: 10 minutes
Headers: 5 minutes
Wrap-up: 5 minutes
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Team Activity
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Generate multiple approaches to
locomotion for project during
competition
Team recorder issues minutes of team
deliberations ASAP after class
Brainstorming
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Trades
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Ideation: 10 minutes
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Generate and Record Ideas
Write one idea on each Post-It
Large number of ideas in short time
Short phrases or pictures
Each member generates at least 10 ideas
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Affinity Diagram - Grouping:
10 minutes
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Arrange ideas that seem related
Try for 6-10 groupings - naturally
Use your gut
ADD IDEAS THAT ARE MISSING!!!
Handling disagreements
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Affinity Diagram - Header Cards:
5 minutes
• Create a Header Post-It™
• State in 3-5 words the “essence” of the
grouping
• Identify the common threads
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Wrap-up (5 minutes)
• Complete?
• Logical?
• EXCITING?
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Evaluation Techniques
(Trades)
The team decides upon the evaluation
criteria (derived from the PDS) by which
the ideas are to be compared BEFORE
making any judgment or evaluation of
any concept. The criteria are to
evaluate, not optimize the solution.
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Pugh Matrix Method I
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Concepts along horizontal axis, evaluation criteria
along vertical axis
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Ensure comparisons are at the same level or on the
same basis
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Choose a reference concept (datum or baseline); e.g.
any prior solution, or the one the group intuitively
thinks is the “best”
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Enter a PLUS (+) if a concept is better than the datum;
enter a MINUS (-) if a concept is worse than the
datum; enter an S if a concept is the same as the
datum
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Pugh Matrix Method II
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Total the PLUSes and MINUSes for each concept and
obtain the algebraic sum for each concept.
Carefully look at the pattern of MINUSes; try to
generate improvements to the concept without eroding
the PLUSes.
If a number of strong concepts do not emerge, then
usually the criteria are
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Ambiguous or subject to different interpretations
The concepts are not distinct but have many similarities
Subsets of other concepts.
When one concept is strongest, re-run the matrix using
it as the datum to validate it as the strongest.
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Pugh Matrix
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ECE 361 Assignments
TEAM ASSIGNMENT - Prepare and circulate minutes from the team
locomotion brainstorming session
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Due ASAP after class today, one per team, circulated to all team
members and faculty
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