Designs are all around us. Everywhere. Someone figured out how to make a door hinge work. Someone worked out the best way to set out the stairs in a house. Everything you touch has been designed.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. One day someone probably got fed up of moving a lump of wood that was used to block the castle doorway. Hard to move though. Perhaps the wood could be balanced on a stone ? Soon someone realised that by balancing wood on on a stone it could be pushed closed without the need to lift it, they would have gone on to realise that with a hard round stone from the river it was even easier to move. After someone else found some cord to secure the pebble, they would have found it could be pivoted on the floor about its corner, but it still needed to be lifted up every time. Maybe a bit of rope could hold the top corner – no longer did the doorman have to even lift the door. The door hinge had been invented.
Unbeknown to them, physics had come into play. Balancing the door on a stone works on the principle of levers. Having the rope at the top puts lets strain on the rope, if it had been near the bottom the force would have been far higher, possible making the rope snap. Future enhancements – make it from metal, use a pin for the top hinge and not a bit of rope. Replace the balance stone with another metal pin and strap.
This illustrates that all designs are incremental improvements on an earlier idea. Could the product in use be put to a new use? What improvements would be required for this new use. How did the last person make it? How would I improve it? No one can make something from scratch. Wherever you are in the design chain precursor material are required. If you were a joiner you’d be wanting to buy that special frictionless ball bearing hinge. The hinge factory don’t want to buy a ball-bearing-making machine, they buy these from a supplier. They buy metal plate from someone else. The metal plate supplier doesn’t make steel, they obtain their precursor from the steel strip mill, who get steel from the steelworks, how obtain Iron Ore from the mining company.
This course will examine how something is designed.
