If you have designs for wonderful machines in mind, but aren’t sure how to turn your ideas into real, engineered products that can be manufactured, marketed, and used, this book is for you. Engineering professor and veteran maker Tom Ask helps you integrate mechanical engineering concepts into your creative design process by presenting them in a rigorous but largely nonmathematical format. Through mind stories and images, this book provides you with a firm grounding in material mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer. Students, product and mechanical designers, and inventive makers will also explore nontechnical topics such as aesthetics, ethnography, and branding that influence product appeal and user preference. Learn the importance of designing functional products that also appeal to users in subtle ways Explore the role of aesthetics, ethnography, brand management, and material culture in product design Dive into traditional mechanical engineering disciplines related to the behavior of solids, liquids, and gases Understand the human factors of design, such as ergonomics, kinesiology, anthropometry, and biomimicry Get an overview of available mechanical systems and components for creating your product

"Having a visceral understanding of mechanical engineering is key to effectively designing industrially manufactured products and systems. Without it, the products you create may bend and break. But many creative designers find it difficult to develop that foundational awareness due to the plodding math-centric method by which mechanical engineering is usually taught. Twenty year industrial design veteran Thomas Ask breaks free from that constrained approach by offering food to both sides of the brain in this holistic look at how to design wonderful things. Ask, a founder of the Society of Inventors and Mad Scientists, feeds the right brain first with a rich survey of the non-technical influences (cultural traditions, visual stereotypes, brand management, etc.) that propel or inhibit industrial design. Then it's the left brain's turn, with a deep chew into material mechanics, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics (the core disciplines of mechanical engineering), where Ask's specially prepared found-in-nature examples helpfully flavor each topic."--Resource description page.

If you have designs for wonderful machines in mind, but aren’t sure how to turn your ideas into real, engineered products that can be manufactured, marketed, and used, this book is for you. Engineering professor and veteran maker Tom Ask helps you integrate mechanical engineering concepts into your creative design process by presenting them in a rigorous but largely nonmathematical format. Through mind stories and images, this book provides you with a firm grounding in material mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer. Students, product and mechanical designers, and inventive makers will also explore nontechnical topics such as aesthetics, ethnography, and branding that influence product appeal and user preference. Learn the importance of designing functional products that also appeal to users in subtle ways Explore the role of aesthetics, ethnography, brand management, and material culture in product design Dive into traditional mechanical engineering disciplines related to the behavior of solids, liquids, and gases Understand the human factors of design, such as ergonomics, kinesiology, anthropometry, and biomimicry Get an overview of available mechanical systems and components for creating your product

Creativity is playing an ever more important role in the success or failure of organizations in the global competitive economy. The field of engineering is no exception. The objective of this book is to satisfy this vital need, which has been covered very little elsewhere.The book, which assumes no prior knowledge, will be useful to many people including all kinds of professional engineers, engineering managers, graduate and senior undergraduate students of engineering, and researchers and instructors in engineering, psychology, and business administration. At the end of each chapter there are numerous problems to test readers' comprehension. The book also includes a comprehensive list of references directly or indirectly related to creativity in engineering.

Jensen (mechanical engineering, Mankato State U., Minn.) is a prolific designer/interpreter/reporter of mechanisms for the user of mechanical movements. This collection offers solutions or inspirations in some 20 areas including the slider crank, cycloid, screw and clamping mechanisms, antibacklash

This text presents a set of product development techniques aimed at bringing together the marketing, design, and manufacturing functions of the enterprise. The integrative methods facilitate problem-solving and decision-making.

This book provides the reader with a comprehensive, relevant, and visually rich insight into the world of research methods specifically aimed at product designers. It includes practical case studies and tutorials that will inform, inspire and help you to conduct product design research better. Product designers need a comprehensive understanding of research methods as their day-to-day work routinely involves them observing people, asking questions, searching for information, making and testing ideas, and ultimately generating 'solutions' to 'problems'. Manifest in the design process is the act of research. Huge technological advances in information, computing and manufacturing processes also offer enormous opportunities to product designers such as the development of 'intelligent' products and services, but at the same time raise important research questions that need to be dealt with. Product designers are, in many ways, best placed to address these challenges because of the manner in which they apply their design thinking to problems. This book demonstrates in a clear, highly visual and structured fashion how research methods can support product designers and help them address the very real issues the world currently faces in the 21st century.