Design for X

'Kung Fu Panda' was a nice movie to watch. Do you remember the scene when Shifu says,'When you focus on kung fu, when you concentrate... you stink'. Maybe it was funny in the movie, but the sad part is that many designers and even organizations fail to focus on the 'value' when they design products.

Was it really long when you thought, "I wish this were designed in a better way"? Bad designs are often products of losing focus on the main problem that the product is designed for. This is the real 'value' of the product. A simple example is that, a pen should write reasonably well under regular conditions. But some designers focus on other things, like giving it an 'unusual' shape and this too to the extent that it becomes next to impossible to write comfortably with it! So essentially a product should perform a single main function (in this case, writing) and a few auxiliary functions (in this case, comfortable gripping while writing, easy to manufacture are a reasonable price in large numbers, etc). So the main function is the single focus of designing. This is called 'Design for X'.

Design for X is a systematic and structured approach to design a product with some a single tangible objective and several second level objectives. It helps mitigate several factors that affect these objectives.

A simplified guideline for designing for X:

1. Define 'X'
2. Try to determine as many factors as possible that affect the 'X'
3. Make a detailed table (or a diagram) to find out the 'level' of each factor. For the sake of simplicity, you may consider only three levels, like level 1 if 'highly affected', level 2 if moderately and level 3 if slightly affected
4. Make an 'objective statement' for each of these factors, keeping the 'X' in mind
5. At the end of the process you will have a 'Design Guideline' document with you for the particular product. This will be your guideline for generating concepts.
6. Now you may use any creativity techniques to design the product for X. You may need to tweak around so that the idea fits into the secondary objectives too.

Quick example:

There are just too many pens that write smoothly (that's a requirement!) Let us design the pen that is quick to open!

Define X : To design a ball point pen that is quick to open

Factors affecting opening time : Ease of grip on the pen , friction between the parts, force required to open the pen, travel of the part for opening, shape of the pen, method of opening of the pen

Factors influence on design

Level 1 : force required to open the pen, travel of the part for opening, method of opening of the pen

Level 2 : Ease of grip on the pen, friction between the parts

Level 3 : shape of the pen

Design Guidelines for a pen that is quick to open:

Level 1 : Design a mechanism for the pen that will have less distance of travel of the moving part and has less operating force

Level 2 : 1. Design the pen body using ergonomic criteria for ease of gripping for selected population.

             2. Choose the materials that will have less relative friction

Level 3 : Design the geometry of pen so that it will assist in opening

Concept 1 : A gravity operated pen.

Pen is held close till it is in the pocket and when you pull it out of pocket the weight of the refill opens it and a mechanism holds it open. The locking mechanism is disengage when it is kept back.

Level 2 & 3 : See the figure below:

Concept 2 : A ball pen with clip as opening mechanism.

Pen is normally held in pocket by the shirt clip. When you pull this pen out, it will actuate the refill to come out. When you are putting it back, the clip is automatically operated again and the refill is pushed back in

Level 2 & 3 : See the figure below:

Concept 3 : A pen that will open when it is about to start writing

The pen will have an actuating mechanism just below its tip. When the tip is touched on the paper, the mechanism will pull the nib out. In order to store the pen back safely, a small plunger at the back can be pulled, so the refill is in normal storing position.

Level 2 & 3 : See the figure below:

Further reading:
1. Design for X: Concurrent Engineering Imperatives by G.Q. Huang
2. Engineering Design: A Systematic Approach Gerhard Pahl Gerhard Pahl, Wolfgang Beitz