During
three decades of my professional life I worked with hundreds
of designers and engineers and had
opportunity
to lead several design teams as well.
I have
been working with different types of designers with various
levels of knowledge, skills and creativity.
I had
opportunity to work with great designers including the top
design engineers in automotive industry.
Those
professionals had strong engineering knowledge, excellent
understanding of products, exceptional
design
skills and lofty creativity. Most of those product designers
had university education in mechanical
engineering
and one of them had even PHD in mechanisms. They designed
products superbly and quickly,
resulting
in smooth production launches and trouble-free manufacturing.
Because
of my design education and my curiosity I have been always
observing design process used by
different individuals and I have been analyzing results
of their work. I was captivated that designers with
similar
education and similar CAD skills created quite different
design solutions and significantly different
quality
of their designs for the same product functions.
Observations
and analysis of products made by different designers lead
to conclusion, that those who
created
designs with higher quality and greater attractiveness had
focused on more details and on smaller
details
than others. Their quality of work was proportional to the
focus on details and to the skill for those
details
development. And as one of my teachers said:
"Professionalism
is the ability to see and understand what others do not
see when they look at the same".
Designed
by designers
Designers
usually work with teams of product engineers who prepare
description of needs, requirements
and
specifications
for the product so designers can create the rest, the very
critical rest.
It must
be understood that designers make very important decisions
for organizations. Through their design
they
form needs for specific manufacturing and assembly processes
and for related production equipment.
Designers
control ease of product manufacturing with its cost. Product
functionality and quality depends on
designers.
They affect products distribution, installation and its
servicing as well. Designers are in charge of
the
product attractiveness and competitiveness on the market
and affect the customers satisfaction.
They
have a power to control significant portion of the company
profit.
Therefore
products should be designed by the best designers that company
can find and effort. Designers
can
be compared to musicians in the music band. Most of us prefer
concerts performed by the best artists,
since
we
admire beauty and excellence that can be provided only by
the best musicians. Designing
is similar.
Better
designers perform better and create better products.
Most
of large companies have design departments located close
to the head-quarters, and those are usually
far
from tool-shops and far from production lines. Designers
are very efficient with 3D models forming on CAD
system,
but because their isolation from the next steps of the product
creation process and because of limited
feed-back
from production facilities very few designers can learn
and reach the real design competency level.
Designers
are usually requested to adapt the existing products to
a new design with a new environment and
a new
styling. Benchmark products are used frequently as a base
for the next designs and as a replacement
for
necessity of new ideas generation or as a compensation for
a limited experience.
Sometimes
those copies from the benchmarked products can cause problems
since some of features and
details
fail after being just transferred to the different product.
New
designs usually require some new solutions and proper modification
of the benchmarked details. That
can
be quite tricky element of the design since most of designers
are not taught to solve design challenges
by
making creative and optimal decisions. Very few schools
teach design, therefore most of designers are
self-taught
and only some of them may have the adequate and correct
design knowledge.
Designers
selection
Hiring
the right person for the company design team is always big
and very important decision an organization
makes.
Success or failure relates to understanding what skills
and talents must be presented by the designer
and
to availability of the effective method for those skills
evaluation.
Most
of companies conduct verbal interviews only, therefore verbal
fluency, prove of using the particular CAD
program
and exposure to similar products are the major criteria
for designers selections. It is assumed that
the
time experience of working on similar designs is equal to
competency in those products development.
It should
be understood that CAD is only a tool, superb modern tool
that is drastically more effective for the
design
analysis and recording than previously used pencil and ruler
on a drafting paper and efficiency
in
forming 3D
CAD models is not the same as ability to design a product.
Applicants
for designers should be rather evaluated for their knowledge
and understanding of all aspects
of
the designed
products, including:
- product
functions and requirements at all stages of its creation
and its life later
- product
components functions and specific requirements
- functions
and related requirements of all features and their details.
Also
understanding of physics, mechanics and geometry basics
must be mandatory.
Design
means creating a product and making it functional and perfectly
working before it becomes existing.
Final
design must be free of errors since it can be very costly
to convey any design fault to production.
Just
one poorly designed feature may create tricky problems for
the product and company, therefore it is
recommended
to select the best designers for the design team, those
who can understand design value
and
evaluate design frequently during its development.
Experience
confirms that the following abilities should be expected
from mechanical designers or design
engineers,
since these skills form a good designer and give certainty
for a good results of their work:
- knowledge
and understanding of physics and its principles
- knowledge
and understanding of mechanics and mechanisms
- knowledge
and understanding of geometry
- understanding
of materials properties
- ability
to imagine complex 3D shapes and their different views
- creativity
and curiosity
- ability
to present concepts on sketches
- ability
to solve design problems
- hands-on
experience with various products
- knowledge
of CAD system
Individuals
with most of the above listed knowledge and skills can learn
and understand any product and its
manufacturing
process quite quickly. They can become great designers quickly
as well..
Knowledge
of the CAD system is beneficial but not so critical since
several weeks is enough to learn system
for
a bright engineer, but development of engineering knowledge,
understanding, imagination and creativity
require
much longer time.
One
of the best and most effective ways to evaluate abilities
of the designers is to do that with tests.
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