This is a course aimed at making you a better designer. The course marries theory and practice, as both are valuable in improving design performance. Lectures and readings will lay out the fundamental concepts that underpin design as a human activity. Weekly design challenges test your ability to apply those ideas to solve real problems. The course is deliberately broad - spanning all domains of design, including architecture, graphics, services, apparel, engineered goods, and products. The emphasis of the course is the basic design process: define, explore, select, and refine. You, the student, bring to the course your particular interests and expertise related to, for instance, engineering, furniture, fashion, architecture, or products. In prior sessions of the course about half of the participants were novices and about half had prior professional design expertise. Both groups seem to benefit substantially from the course. All project work is evaluated by your peers -- and indeed, you will also be a peer reviewer. This format allows you to see an interesting collection of projects while getting useful feedback on your own project.
3.6 Decomposing by Function
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En provenance du cours de University of Pennsylvania
Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society
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Week #3: Design Concepts
The goal of this module is to move from defining the problem to designing a solution. You'll begin by learning about the exploration phase, and you will exit this phase with a number of design concepts for peer review. You'll also learn how to decompose a design to evaluate its overall function, and essential process in creating good design essential to the life of your design. Finally, you'll learn how to critically examine past design artifacts to inform your current concepts so that you can sensibly differentiate your product. By the end of this module, you'll have created 10 solid design concepts, and you will have received feedback on those concepts so that you can move to the next phase of the design process: prototyping.
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Karl T. UlrichVice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Wharton School
I want to illustrate the method of using decomposition by function to help you in
exploration. I want to do it by using the ice cream
scoop example and you may recall from the problem definition video that we came up
with the problem statement. In what way might we create a better
handheld tool for forming balls of ice cream from a bulk container?
Now, decomposition by function is facilitated by the creation of what I call
a function diagram. And a function diagram is basically a flow
chart that describes what it is that the artifact has to do and can be thought of
as functions involving the flow of materials, energy, and signal.
And so, let me just illustrate with the ice cream scoop.
I think the, the flow of material is the most straightforward.
So, let's imagine we have, the bulk container, which has the ice cream.
And, and then we have a, can imagine dividing some element of that, some
portion of that bulk, and then we can imagine forming that portion into a ball.
And so the first, if you want to think about it functionally, the first thing
that happens here is an ice cream scoop divides from bulk.
So it takes the bulk ice cream and it divides it from the bulk.
And then the second thing you might imagine an ice cream scoop doing is
forming a ball. And so the flow of materials in this case
can be thought of as two steps dividing from bulk and forming a ball. And in terms
of flow of material, that's what an ice cream scoop does.
Now there's also a flow of energy. And the main energy flow in an ice cream
scoop is. Apply human power or human force.
We can think about that as a as a flow of energy from our user.
And, there might even be, some signal, but there isn't always a signal flow.
You know, you might imagine some kind of signal, which is you know is in a nice
portion. And that flow goes back to the user.
All right, so, let me first emphasize that function diagrams are not unique.
That is, there are many possible ways of decomposing what it is an artifact does by
function. This is a reasonable way to do it, I think
it's very useful to think for most artifacts to think about the flow of
material, the flow of energy or force, and the flow of signal.
And that lets you think about, what are the elements, the fundamental elements of
function that, that device performs? Now, this is a very simple artifact, an
ice cream scoop, but even for a very simple artifact, it is possible to
decompose or break down what it is that artifact does into smaller pieces.
The next step in using a function diagram, so this thing we call a function diagram.
And the, the next step in use, actually using the function diagram for exploration
is to pick typically at most two or three of these functions to use as a way to
focus your exploration effort. And as I look at this, I think that the.
really the obvious ones are clearly the way in which the scoop divides from bulk
is gonna be critical. It's gonna be critical to think about the
application of human power. And maybe there's some interesting things
that could be done as a result of focusing on the forming of the bowl.
But, I think for, for now, I'm gonna focus on these two The application of human
power, and the dividing of a portion of ice cream from bulk.
Alright, so let me show you how that works.
So, We're going to divide our design problem
into just two pieces and the pieces are going to be divide from bulk and apply
human power. And remember the key idea in decomposition
is we're going to focus single-mindedly on that subproblem and not necessarily in the
context of the, of the overall design problem we're trying to solve.
So, for instance, let me just give some examples for how we might do the out, how
we might consider, the, how we might use that decomposition by focusing on applying
human power. So some ways that you might apply human
power. You might imagine twisting, you might
imagine, squeezing. You might imagine hammering or impacting.
So let's just draw a little hammer here. You might imagine, I don't know pushing.
You might imagine pulling, A little handle here.
You might imagine, I don't know, let's imagine even as crazy as this might seem,
Stepping on something? We might imagine.
And I guess it's a version of squeezing but I'm thinking about like the shears
that are used in cutting branches that look like something like that.
And that's kind of a, a squeeze as well. Alright now see what we just did there we
generated a bunch of ideas. For how it is that human power can be
applied. None of these in the context of ice cream
scoops, but just generally how is it that human power is applied.
And, and, you know, to illustrate that it, see it, it can be, it really should be
outside of the context of ice cream scoops you can even imagine you know, pedaling,
right, might be an application of, of human power.
So those are all the ways you might apply human power.
Many of the ways you might apply human power.
Okay, so now lets do the same thing over dividing from bulk.
What are ways that things are divided from bulk?
I don't know, you might imagine a bulk sheet of material.
And imagine that it's perforated and you, so, I'm going to call that pre-divided.
And, and break maybe. Actually breaking, generally, is an idea.
Breaking or, I suppose let's see how we're going to break this out.
Break. Tear.
We might imagine, let's see, oh I like, how about this, how about punch.
Punch there are certainly, what about just cut.
Imagine a color of some kind. You get the idea.
Let's imagine there could be, how about like the way you think about the way an
excavator works, an excavator shovel. That's a claw in it, and have a big arm
and an actuator. And we could call that excavator scoop.
And, let's see. How about, how about carve or shave?
Some kind of blade. Gets pulled along and that causes a
carving or shaving, The curl of something,
Carve, shave. And you know, some of this is challenging
to sketch, I realize. And so, you know, annotation is usually
very helpful in helping to illustrate what it is you're, you're trying to get at.
Okay. So.
So, that, that, so basically, we d-, we divided, we decomposed by function.
We've picked two function, and then we generate two functions and then we
generated some solutions to subproblems that are independent of the particular
ice-cream scoop problem. Alright.
Now's the fun part which is, we pick one from column A, one from column B, and we
see if we can create an ice-cream scoop that integrates those two principles.
So, let me take let's take. This guy, punch and twist.
See what we could do. So we're gonna do a, a punch, a punch and
twist. So imagine you had a scoop.
Let's see if I can get this right. So imagine, So, what if you had a
cylindrical, Yeah, let me see if I can get this drawing
to be a little better here. All right, so what this thing is, is we're gonna push on
this thing and this is a, so now if I look at the bottom view of this thing,
It's got a, it's a cylindrical section that is like a cookie cutter or like a,
That can punch out and so the way you'd use this is you'd press, you'd press this
cylindrical cutter down into the ice cream.
And then you put your thumb right there and you'd use it to twist the cutter to
form a cylindrical plug of ice cream. Alright, so everyone see what we just did
there? We took the idea of pushing to cut, punch
to cut, and twisting to cut. Integrated into the solution, that's the
idea of a, cut into a cylindrical plug and then twisting it to, to cut.
Alright? how about, one of the things that's kind of frustrating about ice cream
is getting leverage on the ice cream itself.
So I like the idea of, if we go back here, I'm intrigued by this idea of squeezing
and I wonder if there's a, like a squeeze and a scoop that we could do.
We should have just a scoop here, right? A squeeze in a scoop that has, so could,
could there be an ice cream scoop that has, let me think how this would work.
It would have it would be like, like, like a shear of some kind and let's see.
It's going to, to have a, a jaw that comes this way as well.
And, you're going to, you're going to put it in the ice cream and this thing is
going to come down. So it's a,
It's a pincer scooper. So, this leverages the idea of using
opposing force of squeezing pincers instead of requiring the wrist of the user
to, to, to resist the action of the, of the scooping.
I'm also intrigued by, here's another one that I'm intrigued by,
I wonder if there's more of a pulling action that we could use so you could
imagine the users, the user grabbing this thing and pulling and if we could some how
get the cutter, the pulling feature part of this thing.
So this is going to be pull to fuh, to form a curl of ice cream.
Then that also would have this nice quality of all the forces lining up so
that it doesn't, hurt the wrist. All right.
And let's see if there's another one here. I wonder if there's a way to kind of do
the excavator thing. I'm thinking.
So, a push approach. And let's imagine we have a ball-shaped
cutter and I wonder if there's a way to create a little mechanism such that the,
Such that you could get this thing somehow.
This piece here to rotate under, kinda like an excavator when you push down on
the top. And, and I'll give some thought to, how to
do that. It's, it's, that, just thinking that
through probably would take ten or fifteen minutes to think about how to do that.
But that's an example of combing the notion of the excavator head with the
notion of pushing. In order to get the, get this to work.
So now I've taken some time to think about some of those and I've articulated four of
them as little more nicely done sketches. So this is an example of the end product
of that kind of process. So to illustrate, the push shovel.
If, if you, if you can sup, if you can get a little sliding mechanism here, such that
when I push down on this thing, The scoop first makes contact with the ice
cream. But then as you push further, it forces,
through this little connection here, it forces a rotation of the scooper in order
to create, cut a scoop. Through a pushing action, which seems like
it might be a lot better than what normally happens with the rest.
Now, let me just point out this one here. This idea actually didn't come from the
functional decomposition. It came from thinking about kind of one of
the pin points, keeps the wrist torque that's applied when you scoop.
The wrist brace idea is simply you have that brace come up over the wrist to take
relieve the torque on the user. This is a, is a resolution and I thought
about how to draw it a little more clearly of the punch and twist idea.
The idea is you push, the sharp cutter, punches a cylinder, but then you use your
thumb here to rotate that cylinder, and it has kind of a diagonal opening to it so
that, that edge cuts the, cuts a plug, as, as you, as you rotate it.
And then this is a resolution or a little nicer illustration of how that claw polar
cutter might, might work. And then one additional ideal, on the pull
and scrape is that, you might even be able to make it so it had a little hinge or
something, so, you may could even use it in, in two modes. You could use in kind of
conventional scoop mode, and you could rotate it down, so you could pull, and,
scrape, with the scraping action more in line with where it is you're pulling, with
your hand. All right?
So that's, those are illustrations of how it is that you take a functional
decomposition, use it to get some insights for what the elements of the design might
be, and then combine them in order to create integrated solutions.
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