I define engineering design as an amalgamation of creative, logical and collaborative ideas. To me, engineering design is not only about solving problems, but it’s about asking the right questions and designing solutions to meet the needs of the user. Human connection is a core personal value of mine, which extends to my definition of engineering design. I value user-focused design, which strives to connect the technical designs to the human. The values I will go on to discuss are the values I stand to uphold within my approach to user-centered engineering design.

As a first-year engineering student moving onto his second year, my approach to engineering has been honed and redefined throughout my projects in first year. The 3D LEGO model of a penguin you can see at the top of every page, was created to represent my engineering process, which will be expanded on as I make analogies and link back to it throughout this website. The values I have come to appreciate throughout my experiences are as follows:

Resourcefulness is a value that I’ve largely learned through Praxis. Some phrases I would like to borrow from Prof. Carrick and Prof. Lofgreen are: “build on the shoulders of giants” and “don’t reinvent the wheel”. When starting a project, I’ve learned it’s essential to rigorously research and understand reference designs and apply them to your work. Being resourceful to me means applying the body of knowledge to my work and using the resources I have to make creative shortcuts in the design process. When approaching the design portfolio, my initial plan was to CAD a graphic, however I did not initially plan to use LEGO. As I learned Onshape through the tutorials provided by Prof. Carrick, tutorial four was creating three basic lego bricks. I demonstrated resourcefulness by deciding to reuse the project and skills from the tutorial rather than creating a complete project from scratch. Thus, the CAD for my portfolio was created in LEGO.

I value the process of reframing the main objective or goal down into sub-parts and individual components that must be completed. As a creator, I start with a holistic perspective on the overarching big picture of each project, thus I value the ability to alter my perspective and focus on subparts that are necessary to create the final product. In my penguin, the model is made up of 74 individual pieces and 73 connectors created in CAD. I started the CAD with a holistic view, knowing what I wanted my final product to look like, but I then broke it down and worked on each section separately: the body, the arms, the front, the back, and the head. By doing this, I was able to work faster, iterate versions with ease, and troubleshoot problems quickly.

By adaptability, I mean to say that I value the ability to work within creative constraints and find workarounds and alternatives to solving problems. I view engineering design as a medium for creative expression, however not all crazy and creative ideas are plausible, especially given the knowledge of first year students. Thus, I’ve learned to value the ability to find alternatives and find ways to operate within constraints. The initial project constraints of the LEGO CAD had only three initial brick types, which I adapted and reconstructed to make nine additional types necessary to create my project. For example, creating the eyes was a problem with the constraints of LEGO, which I found workarounds by creating completely new pieces.