Claudia Eckert, Professor of design at Open University,,hold a seminar, on Thursday Januaryer 29th at Nano-INNOV (building N2, room 34) from 2pmto 3pm, on the theme of : Design Margins
Summary
Very few designed products are completely optimised. Most products exceed their requirements by a certain amount in all or most of their parameters, which gives designers a margin to operate in. Designers sometimes add margins to parameters throughout the design process to buffer uncertainties and have flexibility to respond to changes. However, many margins are hidden. These talk reports on a case study in a truck design company to illustrate the range of terminology and concepts designers use in an organisation. It provides a definition of margins as an underlying concept and discusses how margins can an explicit understanding of margins can shape design processes
Biography
Claudia Eckert is a professor of design at the Open University, the British distance education university, where she also carried out her doctoral research, before spending nearly 10 years in the Engineering Design Centre in Cambridge. Her research interests are in understanding and supporting design processes and in particular engineering change and processes planning. She is also working on comparisons between design domains.
