Chapter Summary
While attempting to differentiate product development and designing, the Otto and Wood assert that the designing process of a product is one of the activities during product development involving the excogitation of a product that meets the demands of the market as well as the company’s overall objective (5). According to the authors, design can be put into several categories inclusive of; original design, adaptive design and variant design (Otto and Wood, 7). The three types of designs mentioned above differ in the context to which they are applied. For instance, original design is normally employed during the production of a new product like a new braking system for a motor vehicle. Adaptive design is employed when one wants to modify and existing breaking system to meet customer demands and feedback while variant design is the process of making a new breaking system for a new vehicle by modifying the breaking system of a n existing vehicle. Design can be further classified according to the discipline in which it is being carried out (for instance engineering design, and furniture design) (Otto and Wood, 9). Essentially, the difference in designs found in different fields can be pinned on simple concepts such as need for modeling (like in engineering designs) and need for simple visualization (like in the case of making furniture).
According to Woods, design has a rich history which is best captured through a reflective overview of its various theories and methodologies; theories and methods that are known to stem from various parts of the world from different people and at difference times. Some of the oldest thoughts of design can be traced to a period before the fall of the Roman Empire with some of the greatest contributors in the thoughts being Aristotle and Archimedes (Otto and Wood, 43).
Work Cited
Otto, Kevin N., and Kristin L. Wood. Product Design: Techniques in Reverse Engineering and New Product Development. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. Print.
