1 Introduction
Frances Davis and Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford
The Engineering Design section of this book discusses design techniques that will help you complete your semester long design project. The goal of this section is to help you work on an open-ended challenge where you must come up with new insights, ideas, and prototypes. The aim of the guide is to provide specific and understandable instruction, while remaining adaptable to varied projects that you and your classmates will choose to pursue.
The role of teams
Collaboration is a hugely valuable asset for innovation. Some of the techniques described will require you to collaborate with your team members often asking you to work as an individual initially but bring in your team at certain stages. The goal of the different individual and team techniques you will use is to balance the collaborative power of the team with the nimbleness and practicality of individual work.
Your first project !
Designing things that people use is the simplest version of design. Designing things to help people create for, sell to, or serve others, often raises the level of complexity. For your first project, you will redesign an everyday object to improve its accessibility.
