Design philosophy, what's good, what's bad? sometimes these can be rather ambiguous concepts. When it comes to engineering design, the limitations become more clear. There are always several primary issues that need to be addressed for a concept to even get off the ground. Is the concept feasible? Is it worth manufacturing? Will people purchase it? Can it be manufactured at a cost that is reasonable and marketable? Should it be designed at all in the first place, or is the whole project a waste of time?

    The whole subject of design is rather voluminous and sometimes not really cohesive or coherent. When it comes right down to it, as a design engineer, you will be employed by a company and that company will decide, in many respects, what exactly will be designed by you or the team you are a part of. In this role you not only have to know your boundaries, but also know when to let it loose and let your creative inspirations take hold.

    This directly relates to the concept of "what should be designed" in the first place. Whatever it is, it, for the most part, must be functional since, as we all know, form follows function. You could design the most beautiful widget in the world, but if it does not perform the expected functions of a widget, then the product will fail miserably and so will you.

    Along with the "form follows function" schema, there are constraints that must be attached to the design of products in order for them to be classified as "good". These constraints will mostly be applied, or decided by the company for which you work, however, in general they will be concerned with areas such as environmental responsibility, cost containment, aesthetic harmony, safety, marketability, manufacturability, etc. 

    "Bad" designs will run contrary to the optimization of the previous paragraphs points. It may include areas such as over design, under performance, wasting of resources or time and so on. There can sometimes be a very thin line between what is considered good and bad design. Sometimes a good design that is stretched just slightly too far can rampantly morph into a catastrophic failure. Engineers must be ever vigilant of this problem when developing their own concepts and designs.

    As for myself, and as stated before, I've found that I need to think more creatively. My strengths are my knowledge base, my attention to detail, my drive and desire to complete a project to the best possible outcome as well as my professional demeanor. I use these attributes every day where I work, designing and developing new products for the educational physics and environmental sampling community. It is a challenge to try to derive a new method of showing a concept that may already has several existing products  affiliated with it. I may need to do more research or use one of the concepts shown in the class or that I have found online in order to get that "spark" of ingenuity, however I've found that once that the fuse is lit by that "spark", I have no trouble seeing the project easily through to it's completion.

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