This document provides a framework for understanding design that includes five key elements: 1) design phases, 2) design tools, 3) technical knowledge, 4) design business strategy, and 5) technical communications. It describes the typical design phases including needs assessment, requirements analysis, concept generation, system design, and testing. It also outlines important design tools such as marketing tools, project management tools, simulation tools, and CAD tools. Finally, it discusses necessary technical knowledge for design including knowledge of electronic components, circuits, EMC, feedback and control, and signal processing.
how to discover requirement by identify problem
how to solve the problem by discovering requirement
how identify customer need
How to Capture Requirements Once They Are Discovered?
What Are Requirements?
There are Different types of requirements
There are Common types of requirements
Data Gathering
Probes
what is Probes
types of Probes
what is Contextual Inquiry
Brainstorming for innovation
Personas and scenarios
how to discover requirement by identify problem
how to solve the problem by discovering requirement
how identify customer need
How to Capture Requirements Once They Are Discovered?
What Are Requirements?
There are Different types of requirements
There are Common types of requirements
Data Gathering
Probes
what is Probes
types of Probes
what is Contextual Inquiry
Brainstorming for innovation
Personas and scenarios
Business analysis interview question and answersGaruda Trainings
Ā
Business Analysis is the process of understanding business change needs, assessing the impact of those changes, capturing, analyzing and documenting requirements and then supporting the communication and delivery of those requirements with relevant parties.The person who carries out this task is called a business analyst or BA.
Jeff Belden MD and Janey Barnes PhD co-presented at HIMSS Virtual Conference June 2010. You can hear the audio recording if you are a HIMSS member, available online.
For more classes visit
www.snaptutorial.com
WEEK 1DQ 1 What is Total Quality Management
WEEK 1DQ 2 A System Perspective
WEEK 2DQ 1Dr. Deming's 14 Points
Business analysis interview question and answersGaruda Trainings
Ā
Business Analysis is the process of understanding business change needs, assessing the impact of those changes, capturing, analyzing and documenting requirements and then supporting the communication and delivery of those requirements with relevant parties.The person who carries out this task is called a business analyst or BA.
Jeff Belden MD and Janey Barnes PhD co-presented at HIMSS Virtual Conference June 2010. You can hear the audio recording if you are a HIMSS member, available online.
For more classes visit
www.snaptutorial.com
WEEK 1DQ 1 What is Total Quality Management
WEEK 1DQ 2 A System Perspective
WEEK 2DQ 1Dr. Deming's 14 Points
Presentatie van Peter Knoers (HVR) en Guus Kok (Van der Hilst) over de reden dat organisaties verdwalen en de verbinding met de organisatie en de buitenwereld verliezen.
76 May 2007Vol. 50, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM COMMUNIC.docxevonnehoggarth79783
Ā
76 May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 75
Adding the word architect to a software practitionerās title seems sim-
ple enough, but beneath the surface fundamentally different thinking,
toolsets, and disciplines are required to succeed. In teaching software
architecture and working as a software architect, database architect, and
chief architect, I have often found that an unfortunate lack of knowledge
surrounds the architectās role. Even experienced software practitioners are
often unable to define what exactly the architect does or adds to the soft-
ware development process.
THE SOFTWARE
ARCHITECT
B y M a t t h e w R . Mc B r i d e
Leadership is the defining characteristic in
an unforgiving technology arena.
The context for my discussion here is the
construction of enterprise-level business appli-
cations. I chose it for its inherent difficulty and
complexity, though the related architectural
principles may be applied to any type of soft-
ware construction. Specifically, I examine the
results of applying these principles to three sep-
arate development efforts: a product-ordering
Web site, a complex business-to-business inte-
gration project, and the design and develop-
ment of an enterprise application. Regardless
of the situation, my experience has been that
software architects are not born but trained,
sometimes in the school of hard knocks.
Although effective software architects seem to
intuitively understand and guide projects, an
intellectual framework and its associated disci-
plines and tools are behind this thinking.
Reports of IT overspending and project failure
emphasize the fact that these skills must be
developed. Software professionals in a variety
of roles can leverage them to lead software pro-
jects to exceed customer expectations.
Many seminal ideas in software architecture
can be traced back to a speech Christopher
Alexander, a distinguished building architect,
ā¢ Explicit requirements explode by a factor of 50 or
more into implicit (design) requirements as a soft-
ware solution proceeds.
Perhaps more than any other task, managing com-
plexity is an essential element of architecture the
architect must address in order to deliver the
promised system. Strategic approaches are high-level,
broad-brush techniques
used by architects to master
complexity across technical
and nontechnical audiences
alike (see Figure 2).
Included are effective com-
munication and informa-
tion gathering, detailed
planning, and the educa-
tion of all stakeholders
regarding all relevant tech-
nologies. Tactical
approaches address the
techniques the architect
employs at a lower level of
detail, typically with those
who construct or use the
system. This group includes software designers, pro-
ject teams, and end users. Requirements planning,
separation of the system into logical layers, and care-
ful interface definition are
only a few of the tactical
tools at the ar.
SME" typically stands for "Subject Matter Expert." In the context of engineering design, SMEs play a crucial role in providing specialized knowledge and guidance throughout the design process. Here's how SMEs are typically involved in engineering design:
Technical Expertise: SMEs possess deep knowledge and experience in specific areas of engineering, such as mechanical, electrical, civil, or software engineering. They contribute their expertise to ensure that the design meets technical requirements, standards, and regulations.
Problem Solving: SMEs often participate in brainstorming sessions and problem-solving activities to address complex engineering challenges. Their insights help identify potential issues early in the design process and develop effective solutions.
Design Review: SMEs participate in design reviews to evaluate the feasibility, functionality, and safety of proposed designs. They provide critical feedback and recommendations to improve the design and mitigate risks.
Validation and Testing: SMEs collaborate with design teams to develop testing procedures and validate design concepts through simulations, prototypes, and experiments. They ensure that the design performs as intended under various operating conditions.
Continuous Improvement: Throughout the design process, SMEs contribute to continuous improvement initiatives by identifying areas for optimization, efficiency gains, and cost reductions. Their feedback helps refine the design and enhance its overall quality.
Knowledge Transfer: SMEs often mentor junior engineers and share their expertise to build the capabilities of the design team. They provide guidance on best practices, industry trends, and emerging technologies relevant to engineering design.
To design is to plan or organize something for a specific use, or to create something to meet a specific need. Often, designs provide solutions to problem situations. Design solutions are created through the Design Process. This process will vary depending upon what is being designed
Learn why Solution Design is critical and what are components of a Solution Architecture. Boston Technology Corporation (BTC) has expertise in Strategic Consulting and Solution Design Services. Visit our website to see some of our work at http://www.boston-technology.com/
Large software projects cannot be built without some amount of analysis and design. But not all parts of the system require the same amount of design. Some may not require any upfront design at all. Others require a few minutes of architecture discussion; some require weeks of analysis, documents and review. A balance is necessary: too much design and you're delaying the project; too little and you will add technical debt which you'll have to pay in future rewrites and painful maintaining.
How do we decide when design is needed and how much of it is needed? How do other Agile projects do it?
In this talk I discuss what the Agile literature has to say about architecture and how we can answer this question.
Part C Developing Your Design SolutionThe Production Cycle.docxsmile790243
Ā
Part C Developing Your Design
Solution
The Production Cycle
Within the four stages of the design workflow there are two distinct parts.
The first three stages, as presented in Part B of this book, were described
as āThe Hidden Thinkingā stages, as they are concerned with undertaking
the crucial behind-the-scenes preparatory work. You may have completed
them in terms of working through the bookās contents, but in visualisation
projects they will continue to command your attention, even if that is
reduced to a background concern.
You have now reached the second distinct part of the workflow which
involves developing your design solution. This stage follows a production
cycle, commencing with rationalising design ideas and moving through to
the development of a final solution.
The term cycle is appropriate to describe this stage as there are many loops
of iteration as you evolve rapidly between conceptual, practical and
technical thinking. The inevitability of this iterative cycle is, in large part,
again due to the nature of this pursuit being more about optimisation rather
than an expectation of achieving that elusive notion of perfection. Trade-
offs, compromises, and restrictions are omnipresent as you juggle ambition
and necessary pragmatism.
How you undertake this stage will differ considerably depending on the
nature of your task. The creation of a relatively simple, single chart to be
slotted into a report probably will not require the same rigour of a formal
production cycle that the development of a vast interactive visualisation to
be used by the public would demand. This is merely an outline of the most
you will need to do ā you should edit, adapt and participate the steps to fit
with your context.
There are several discrete steps involved in this production cycle:
Conceiving ideas across the five layers of visualisation design.
Wireframing and storyboarding designs.
Developing prototypes or mock-up versions.
219
Testing.
Refining and completing.
Launching the solution.
Naturally, the specific approach for developing your design solution (from
prototyping through to launching) will vary hugely, depending particularly
on your skills and resources: it might be an Excel chart, or a Tableau
dashboard, an infographic created using Adobe Illustrator, or a web-based
interactive built with the D3.js library. As I have explained in the bookās
introduction, Iām not going to attempt to cover the myriad ways of
implementing a solution; that would be impossible to achieve as each task
and tool would require different instructions.
For the scope of this book, I am focusing on taking you through the first
two steps of this cycle ā conceiving ideas and wireframing/storyboarding.
There are parallels here with the distinctions between architecture (design)
and engineering (execution) ā Iām effectively chaperoning you through to
the conclusion of your design thinking.
To fulfil this, Part C presents a detailed breakdown of the many design
.
83
Chapter 5
PROJECT SCOPE MANAGEMENT
This chapter deals with the processes required to ensure that the project includes
all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project suc-
cessfully. This is also known as the Project Scope Management, which is covered
in Chapter 5 of the PMBOK Ā® Guide . There are four cases in this chapter ā three
critical incidents and one issue - based case.
1. Workshop: Project Definition
This critical incident discusses an example of a scope statement used
in practice. Detailed explanations of the components made up of the project
definition in general are discussed. Please note that Workshop is a series of
critical incident cases, where further discussion is presented in Chapters 6 , 7 ,
and 8 on various subjects.
2. Work Breakdown Structure as a Skeleton for Integration
This is an issue - based case that discusses the WBS construction and
potential concerns that might arise if the construction is not validated with
major parties of the project.
3. Project Anatomy
Project Anatomy, an issue - based case, centers on the project decomposi-
tion issue. The team desires to decompose every major project ā s effort and
make sure that the project is on strategy. Logically, the project anatomy might
be equivalent to the WBS with some differences.
CASE STUDIES IN PROJECT, PROGRAM, AND ORGANIZATIONAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Dragan Z . Milosevic, Peerasit Patanakul & Sabin Srivannaboon
Copyright 0 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
84 CASE STUDIES
4. Rapid Prototyping
Rapid Prototyping is a critical incident that takes on a situation where the
scope of the project isn ā t clearly defined. As a result, the project ends up being
late with cost overrun.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Name of Case
Area Supported
by Case Case Type Author of Case
Workshop: Project
Definition
Scope Definition
(Scope Statement)
Critical Incident Dragan Z. Milosevic,
Peerasit Patanakul, and
Sabin Srivannaboon
Work Breakdown
Structure as a Skeleton
for Integration
Development of WBS Critical Incident Wilson Clark and
Dragan Z. Milosevic
Project Anatomy Project Decomposition Issue - based Case Joakim Lillieskold and
Lars Taxen
Rapid Prototyping Scope Verification Critical Incident Stevan Jovanovic
85
Workshop: Project Defi nition
Dragan Z. Milosevic, Peerasit Patanakul,
and Sabin Srivannaboon
With expertise in project management, Konrad Cerni was a senior consultant at
Ball, Inc., a very well - known company in the region. He graduated a Ph.D. in
Engineering Management from one of the leading universities on the East Coast,
and turned himself to a practitioner role since. Konrad, who preferred not to be
addressed as ā Dr. ā , had worked in the fi eld of.
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Chapter2 framework-for-design
1. Elec3017:
Electrical Engineering Design
Chapter 2: A Framework for Design
A/Prof D. S. Taubman
September 18, 2006
1 Purpose of this Chapter
It is easy for design texts (and design courses) to begin to read like anthologies of
good ideas. One reason for this is that there are many good ideas and practices.
Another reason is that unless you are actually practicing design, it is hard to
see the relevance of all the suggestions. A third reason lies in the way many
design texts are created, which usually involves numerous industrial ļ¬eld trips
to collect design case studies and sample current best practice.
What is needed is a good framework for understanding design. The most
common framework found in textbooks revolves around the design phases intro-
duced in Chapter 1. Variations on these design phases may be found in diļ¬erent
disciplines of engineering, but there is also a great deal of commonality. The
design phases represent a useful framework, but they are not suļ¬cient. If all
you needed for eļ¬ective product design was to know the design phases, most of
your university studies would be irrelevant. The purpose of this chapter is to
provide a broader framework for you to understand design. The phases form
one aspect of this broader framework. Hopefully, this framework will also help
you to put your past and future university studies into perspective.
2 Elements of the Framework
The key observation which lies behind the design framework provided here is
that many important design tools and skills are not speciļ¬c to individual de-
sign phases. It is helpful, therefore, to categorize the various aspects of design
learning into the following ļ¬ve areas:
ā¢ design phases;
ā¢ design tools;
ā¢ technical knowledge;
1
2. c
Ā°Taubman, 2006 ELEC3017: Framework for Design Page 2
Customer needs solution to a problem Needs assessment
What features/performance are required? Requirements analysis
What is the design problem? Problem statement
What approaches could we take? Concept generation
Block diagram System design
Technical specifications Specifications analysis
Components, circuits, code, etc. Detailed design
Does the design meet the requirements? Prototyping and testing
Figure 1: Typical phases in the design process..
ā¢ design business strategy; and
ā¢ technical communications.
2.1 Design Phases
We consider only the following phases, although others can potentially be iden-
tiļ¬ed. These phases are also depicted in Figure 1.
1. Needs assessment
2. Requirements analysis
3. Problem statement
4. Concept generation
5. Concept selection and system design
6. Speciļ¬cations analysis
7. Detailed design
8. Prototyping
9. Testing
3. c
Ā°Taubman, 2006 ELEC3017: Framework for Design Page 3
The ļ¬rst two phases are most strongly focused on the customer. The pur-
pose of a needs assessment is to identify customer needs which are not met by
existing products, while the purpose of requirements analysis is to determine the
features which target consumers require from products which they need. To help
clarify the distinction between needs assessment and requirements analysis, it
is simplest to take the perspective of a consumer products manufacturing ļ¬rm.
In this case, needs assessment is an ongoing activity, which seeks to identify
products for which there may be a market. Requirements analysis, however, is
not a general ongoing activity; it is concerned with a speciļ¬c product concept.
The distinction between needs assessment and requirements analysis is less
clear for consulting engineering ļ¬rms. In this case, the design process is normally
initialized by a client who already has an identiļ¬ed need. In this setting, the
term needs assessment is sometimes used to describe a preliminary attempt to
document what the client actually wants to achieve. Since both of these phases
are strongly focused on customer perceptions, it is not surprising to ļ¬nd that
marketing is the most important tool which supports them. As noted in the
next sub-section, however, marketing is also important to other phases in the
design process.
The third and fourth phases embody the most conceptual aspects of design.
Problem statement is the process of concisely stating the design problem, with a
view to capturing its most fundamental objectives, challenges and constraints.
Problem statement is more diļ¬cult than you might imagine. A good problem
statement should stay clear of two opposing evils. The ļ¬rst evil is that of impos-
ing pre-conceived solution strategies on the problem. Consider, for example, the
problem of designing a new building product for driving nails. It is tempting to
describe the problem as that of designing a āmore eļ¬ective hammer.ā However,
this subtly imposes the form of an existing nail-driving solution (the hammer)
on the design process. The second evil is that of providing a problem statement
which is so vague that it is of no assistance in the subsequent concept generation
phase. A good problem statement should be suļ¬ciently speciļ¬c that it exposes
fundamental challenges and constraints of the design problem. We shall discuss
methods for developing useful yet open problem statements in Chapter 4.
The other primarily conceptual design phase is concept generation. The
main objective of this phase is to generate a large range of potential approaches
to the design problem, at a high level. This requires lateral thinking, as well as
an awareness of relevant technologies. The central distinction between concept
generation and subsequent design phases is breadth. During concept generation,
you aim to ļ¬nd a large set of potential concepts without exploring them in any
signiļ¬cant detail. During this process, it is possible (even desirable) that a
good portion of the proposed concepts have no chance of actually working. A
deliberate lack of depth and willingness to suggest wacky concepts both facilitate
creative exploration of the possibilities. We shall discuss methods to stimulate
the creative process of concept generation in Chapter 4.
System design, speciļ¬cations analysis and detailed design are the most tech-
nical design phases. These are the central competencies required for a successful
design. All the creative concept generation and problem understanding in the
4. c
Ā°Taubman, 2006 ELEC3017: Framework for Design Page 4
world are worthless if you cannot actually generate a design which will work.
By contrast, if you have mastered the technical aspects of design, you may well
be able to ļ¬nd a solution of sorts, even if you have only a narrow view of the
problem with an incomplete understanding of the requirements. This point is
frequently understated by design texts, which tend to focus on the conceptual
aspects of design.
At its simplest, system design is a disciplined approach to the creation of
block diagrams, so as to expose major sub-systems and the relationship between
them. One goal of system design is to provide early identiļ¬cation of critical sub-
systems, whose design might prove challenging or even impossible. This may
force a return to the concept generation phase or even the requirements. System
design cannot proceed until one of the concepts generated in the previous phase
has been selected. It is convenient to lump concept selection and system design
together, since they are tightly connected. For example, rough system designs
for several diļ¬erent concepts may need to be created before a āļ¬nalā concept
selection can take place1 . We shall have more to say on system design, and
block diagrams in particular, in Chapter 4.
The distinction between requirements analysis and the more technical phase
of speciļ¬cations analysis has already been elaborated in Chapter 1. Exactly
where the speciļ¬cations analysis phase belongs in the design process can vary
with the nature of the design problem. Some speciļ¬cations can be derived from
requirements alone. In other cases, speciļ¬cations are inherently dependent on
the selected design concept. This often happens in very complex designs. Even
in the simple case of a household electric heater, speciļ¬cation of the heating
elementās power rating may be strongly dependent on selected concepts such as
radiative vs. convective heat transfer.
The one thing we can say is that an attempt to derive technical speciļ¬cations
should be made prior to the detailed design phase. Detailed design is concerned
with such matters as circuit design, component selection, digital logic design,
operating frequency selection, software coding, algorithm parameter selection,
PCB layout, and much more. There is not much to be said about the detailed
design phase itself, but there is a lot to be said about detail design tools, relevant
technical knowledge and so forth. As such, chapters 6 to 9 are all highly relevant
to the detailed design phase.
The ļ¬nal two design phases, prototyping and testing, are closely connected.
Prototyping plays a particularly important role in Electrical Engineering for two
reasons:
ā¢ Massive advances in miniaturization mean that the systems designed by
Electrical Engineers tend to be highly complex, with internal interactions
which are hard to fully comprehend or adequately simulate.
ā¢ Low cost and the availability of highly advanced prototyping tools make it
possible to prototype your ideas much more quickly and realistically than
in many other branches of Engineering.
1 Actually, nothing is very āļ¬nalā about most design activities.
5. c
Ā°Taubman, 2006 ELEC3017: Framework for Design Page 5
Accordingly, you should not be surprised to learn that electronic product design
often involves a large number of prototyping phases. In this course, you will
construct a functional prototype of your product. Prior to that point, you may
prototype a variety of critical sub-systems and sub-circuits to better understand
their behavior and interaction. The functional prototype itself, however, exists
only to verify a subset of the ļ¬nal productās features. Near the end of a product
design process, one or more manufacturing prototypes are typically created to
test as many aspects of the ļ¬nal product as possible prior to manufacture. You
should be prepared to spend more than half of the overall eļ¬ort of
your design project in the detailed design and prototyping phases.
Testing is, of course, closely connected to prototyping. There is currently a
growing need for capable test engineers in the workforce. One aspect of testing
is the development of test plans, based on the speciļ¬cations. Testing also goes
hand in hand with debugging. Debugging is the domain of the engineering
āsuper-sleuth,ā tracking problems to their source through a trail of obscure
clues. The need for debugging is unavoidable in complex products. In some
cases, testing and debugging may take as long or even longer than the detailed
design phase.
2.2 Design Tools
We identify the following design tools here, noting that this list is far from
exhaustive.
1. Marketing tools
These include focus groups, surveys, lead user interviews, market research,
monitoring of competitors and other methods to assess consumer needs,
consumer requirements and valuable features for products.
Marketing tools are central to the ļ¬rst two design phases: needs assess-
ment and requirements analysis. However, marketing tools can play an
important role in other phases of the design process. Marketing tools are
used to understand the relationship between features, price and sales vol-
ume, which in turn informs the detailed design phase. Marketing tools
are used to assess prototypes, compare various industrial designs (i.e., the
look and feel of the product), and so forth.
Marketing tools are the subject of Chapter 3.
2. Project management tools
Project management is the discipline you need to carry any complex de-
sign process to successful completion, within budget and time constraints.
Surprisingly, the tools of project management play an important role even
in small group design projects such as that undertaken in this course. At
the end of the course, students are frequently able to point to project
management failures as their chief downfall. Project management is the
subject of Chapter 5.
6. c
Ā°Taubman, 2006 ELEC3017: Framework for Design Page 6
3. Economic analysis tools
We look at manufacturing costs in Chapter 11. In the same chapter, we
also introduce tools for economic decision making. These tools help you
to make design decisions on a proļ¬t and loss basis.
4. Process tools
We look at quality assurance processes for design in Chapter 14. These are
processes which are used to monitor and continuously improve the overall
design methodology followed within an engineering ļ¬rm. These processes
are particularly important to the Computing and Electrical Engineering
professions. This is because these professions design systems of such com-
plexity that quality cannot be reliably assessed through testing of the ļ¬nal
product.
5. System engineering tools
Systems engineering is a large topic and an area of high demand for pro-
fessional engineers. A practicing systems engineer has been invited to
provide you with an introduction to this ļ¬eld.
6. Simulation tools
Examples include Spice, Simulink, Matlab, EM ļ¬nite element analysis
tools, etc.
7. Prototyping tools and methods
Electronic prototyping tools include circuit assembly systems such as
breadboards, veroboard and wire-wrap systems. During this course, you
should learn good wiring and component placement techniques, if you are
not already familiar with them.
Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAās) provide excellent platforms
for rapidly and convincingly prototyping complex digital designs. Prior to
the development of a custom ASIC, design engineers usually develop an
FPGA implementation. Of course, FPGAās are also widely deployed in
ļ¬nal products sold to consumers.
Modern micro-controllers come with excellent tool support for rapid pro-
totyping and testing.
8. Computer Automated Design (CAD) tools
In this course, you will use the Atrium (formerly Protel) suite of schematic
capture and printed circuit board (PCB) design tools. We look at PCB
design in Chapter 13.
9. Mechanical drawing
Material in this area is taught separately by the School of Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering.
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2.3 Technical Knowledge
In addition to tools, the design engineer needs to be equipped with a wide range
of technical knowledge. This is one of the main reasons you go to University.
Here are some signiļ¬cant areas of technical knowledge, important for design.
1. Electronic components
You need to be aware of the electrical properties, tolerances and ratings
of common electronic components (see Chapter 6).
2. Circuits
You need to be familiar with analog and digital circuit analysis and syn-
thesis techniques.
You need to be able to recognize common circuit conļ¬gurations.
You need to be aware of the existence of circuit solutions to a variety of
common sub-problems. The more you know, the more likely you are to
be able to come up with good designs.
Circuit knowledge and practice will help make you proļ¬cient in reading
and exploiting the wealth of information provided in manufacturersā data
sheets.
Electronic circuit knowledge is principally acquired through other courses
in your degree program, but Chapter 7 of your lecture notes for this course
provides some useful ideas.
3. Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC)
This is an area of knowledge to which some eļ¬ort will be devoted in this
course (Chapter 8). Most people have experienced the eļ¬ects of electronic
interference through their televisions, radios, mobile phones and the like.
Common sources of such interference include electric appliances (particu-
larly those with commutated motors) and computers.
Designers generally need to be aware of the various modes through which
interfering signals may be coupled. Designers also need to be equipped
with at least some techniques to minimize the eļ¬ects of interference. In
some cases, designers may need to be familiar with relevant regulatory
standards governing acceptable levels of generated electromagnetic inter-
ference.
4. Feedback and Control
This is one of the fundamental disciplines of Electrical Engineering, and
one which is guaranteed to have enduring value and applicability to a wide
range of problems in design and elsewhere.
The vast majority of analog circuits rely heavily on feedback to provide
predictable behaviour. Feedback is also found in numerous complex sys-
tems, involving analog and digital electronics, software components, and
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so forth. Fundamental questions relating to stability, settling time and
sensitivity to noise can be answered using analytical methods. Moreover,
designers are able to recognize the factors which aļ¬ect these issues and so
optimize design performance.
Control theory and practice cannot be taught in ELEC3017, for obvious
reasons. Whole subjects in your degree program are devoted to this body
of knowledge.
5. Signal Processing
Many of the project topics or design concepts students ļ¬rst think of in
ELEC3017 require signal processing techniques. Examples include tone
decoding, signal extraction from noise, echo location, voice recognition
and many others. Some of these projects require too much knowledge
or too much development eļ¬ort to be undertaken in the present course,
but the message is clear: signal processing is a core electrical engineering
which is central to many design problems.
Signal processing theory and practice cannot be taught in ELEC3017, for
obvious reasons. Whole courses in your degree program are concerned
with this body of knowledge. The advanced signal processing techniques
used in many practical designs cannot be taught until the 4th year, in
ELEC4042, due to the intellectual maturity required to appreciate them.
6. Physical Communications
Analog and digital communication techniques, signal recovery in the pres-
ence of noise and interference, error correction techniques, channel equal-
ization strategies and so forth, are all highly relevant to the design of
products which communicate. Communication is not just what happens
when you use your mobile phone. Internal communications within many
complex systems employ sophisticated techniques. In the future, this is
likely to apply even to the communication between sub-systems on a single
chip. Like control and signal processing, communication theory is one of
the fundamental disciplines of Electrical Engineering which is guaranteed
to have enduring value and applicability.
Physical communication theory and practice cannot be taught in
ELEC3017, for obvious reasons. Whole courses in your degree program
are concerned with this body of knowledge.
7. Software Programming Languages
It is important not to draw too big a distinction between software and
hardware. Most electronic products with any level of sophistication in-
volve a combination of both hardware and software components. Electrical
engineering design almost inevitably involves software, and most electrical
engineers spend at least some of their time programming. Control, signal
processing or communication algorithms designed by electrical engineers
are implemented ļ¬rst in software, both for veriļ¬cation and often also for
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consumer deployment. Over time, increasing portions of the design might
be ported to dedicated hardware, ļ¬rst to FPGAās and then maybe to an
ASIC, so as to drive down manufacturing costs, increase speed and/or
decrease power consumption. One rule of thumb is that moving a com-
putationally expensive process from a general purpose CPU or DSP to an
FPGA will bring a 50-fold increase in speed for a given cost (equivalently,
a 50-fold reduction in cost for a given speed). Moving from FPGA to
ASIC may bring a further 50-fold gain. The corresponding development
eļ¬ort, however, may be enormous.
Complex designs realized through FPGAās, ASICās, or a combination of
both, normally include embedded CPUās which must be programmed. At
the other end of the scale, microcontrollers are stand-alone processors
which are designed to realize complete systems with as few components as
possible, by including common I/O hardware on the same chip. Whether
the processor is embedded in a piece of hardware, a microcontroller, or
the general purpose CPU in a desktop PC, programming is an essential
skill for the designer of electronic products.
Programming cannot be taught in ELEC3017, but you should endeav-
our to acquire as much conļ¬dence as possible in computer programming.
The Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering syllabi include only
two formal programming courses, but you should endeavour to augment
these skills by taking programming assignments and laboratory exercises
in other courses very seriously. You should also approach programming
aspects of any 4th year thesis project that you undertake as an opportunity
to broaden your skills and increase your conļ¬dence/
8. Hardware Description Languages
Digital hardware design itself is too complex to be done entirely man-
ually. Instead, hardware designers must learn to program in hardware
description languages such as Verilog or VHDL.
Hardware description languages cannot be taught in ELEC3017, but you
should consider acquiring this valuable skill to round out your capabilities
as a design engineer.
9. Manufacturing Processes
Successful design cannot be carried out in isolation, without an awareness
of the manufacturing processes that will be used to manufacture the de-
signed product. The sequential approach of ļ¬rst designing a product and
then handing it on to manufacturing engineers to ātweak thingsā for ease
of manufacturing has been abandoned long ago. The sequential approach
takes too long, costs to much, and may produce designs which simply can-
not be manufactured. Concurrent engineering is the term used to describe
the integration of manufacturing considerations during product design. In
this course, you will be introduced to some of the relevant manufacturing
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considerations (see Chapter 12). You will also be required to incorporate
manufacturing considerations into your design projectās ļ¬nal report.
10. Safe and Ethical Design Practices
Safety is a strong focus of modern product design, and rightly so. De-
signing for safety is the subject of Chapter 9. Broader ethical issues in
electrical engineering are the subject of an entire course in the 4th year of
your program and a condition of accreditation by the Australian Institute
of Engineers.
2.4 Design Business Strategy
1. Regulatory and industry standards
Some standards are the subject of government regulation so that being
aware of their existence and following their stipulation becomes a matter
of law. The majority of standards are created by industry representatives,
usually in open fora, but sometimes in closed consortia. These standards
govern the way in which products should be designed so as to success-
fully interoperate with each other. Customers should be unwilling to buy
products which cannot interoperate with related products from other man-
ufacturers. Since these standards are created by industry representatives,
there are strong business incentives to participate in standardization ac-
tivities. We shall have more to say about this in Chapter 15.
2. Intellectual property
Intellectual property is the term used to refer to patents, copyright, trade-
marks and some less well-known forms of legal protection such as regis-
tered designs. Patents are a strong form of legal protection. Patents held
by others can prevent you from designing and marketing products which
incorporate the protected ideas, regardless of whether or not you come up
with the ideas independently. By the same token, maintaining a patent
portfolio of your own can be an important business strategy. You cannot
aļ¬ord to be ignorant of patents and how they work. Chapter 16 is devoted
to this topic.
2.5 Technical Communication
1. Written communication
Technical writing is a vital skill for design and for your career in general.
General writing ability and language proļ¬ciency certainly help, but there
is a lot more to good technical writing. Technical writing also plays an
important role in this course, being the subject of Chapter 10.
2. Oral presentation skills
The ability to prepare and deliver an eļ¬ective oral presentation is not
something you were born with. This is a slightly less important skill than
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Table 1: Topics taught in ELEC3017
Topic Week Most relevant design phases
Marketing (tools) 2 needs + requirements analysis
Concept generation (phase) 2 concept generation
System design (phase) 3 system design
Project management (tools) 3 all
Electronic components (knowledge) 3-4 detailed design
Circuit ideas (knowledge) 4 detailed design
EM compatibility (EMC) 4-5 detailed design + testing
Prototyping methods (tools) 5 prototyping
Speciļ¬cations and testing (phases) 5 speciļ¬cations analysis + testing
Safe design (knowledge) 6 detailed design
Technical writing (communication) 6 all
Costing and economics (tools) 6 detailed design
Quality assurance (tools) 7 all
Standards (strategy) 7 detailed design + testing
Intellectual property (strategy) 7 concept generation + system design
Manufacturing (knowledge) 8 system design + detailed design
Systems engineering (tools) 8 detailed design
PCB design (tools) 9 detailed design
Mechanical drawing (tools) 10-11 detailed design
Oral presentations (communication) 12-13 all
technical writing, but still deserves some signiļ¬cant attention. Conļ¬dence
in your own understanding of the design problem and your design solution
are key ingredients to success in the ELEC3017 project seminar.
3 The Framework Related to ELEC3017
For a variety of reasons, teaching in ELEC3017 will not be organized solely
on the basis of the categories presented in the previous section. One of these
reasons is that you need to receive information in an order which best facilitates
your ongoing design project. In the end, the categories are most useful in
helping you to see how the things which you learn ļ¬t together. Quite a bit of
this course focuses on design tools and knowledge, rather than speciļ¬c design
phases, but the framework allows you to see how these tools relate to one or more
of the design phases. Other aspects of the course exist to extend your technical
knowledge. In this respect, though, the course serves only to supplement your
learning in other courses, all of which are ultimately intended to help you design.
Table 1 provides a convenient summary of relationship between topics taught
in ELEC3017 and the design phases to which they are most relevant. As for
your formal written lecture notes, the topics covered should be as follows2 .
2 We say āshould beā because these lecture notes are still being written.