Toasting Design

The combination of entertainment and design can be a difficult one. On one hand you have a scientific method with quantifiable proof's, substantiated arguments and an inherent logic. On the other you have what tickles the fancy of a crowd and this is typically impossible to quantify, argue against or apply any sort of logic to (there is a reason you don't see engineers with psychology degrees and...

Complements of the season! Of course if you only listen to this at a later date then I am left having to just complement you. On what you may ask? Well on listening to this podcast of course (unless you are actually listening to this around december end 2020 - in which I am only complementing you on the season). In conclusion to the year we look back at what happened with design, the good and the...

With design, there are no clear "right" ways or "wrong" ways and it depends on what works for you. Having said that, there are plenty of "wrong" ways and in part these are contributed to the designer wanting to skip steps or force a design in a particular direction. There are also terrible ways (no inverted commas there, they are just plain and simply terrible!) and those are the ones you should n...

Reading through the complete disaster of a design report is depressing and agravating but, as always, there is a silver lining. In this case it is our chance to remind you that we told you so! That all those daft ideas, poor choices (or lack of choices), continued selection of concept 2 or insistence of comparing blue helicopters to aluminium aquariums were highlighted, colour coded, stated, repea...

Design is a skill and skills need to be practiced consistently. So in breaks where you don't have anything to design or projects to leave until the last minute, consider some background tasks or ideas to keep things fresh. Or don't... You could always do you own thing and give us more things to talk about in consideration of the obscure and weird inexplicable ideas that are pursued. Hosted skillfu...

Engineers tend to deal with images and figures better than text and words. The use of drawings/sketches/rendered views, etc. is all but critical for a design. Stop fighting it, accept it and embrace it. Its not the dark side (unless you the dark side is better, in which case it is the dark side). Also seriously, if you have found Jeremy, keep him. Hosted in animation and pictorially by M. Boer and...

In the current conclusion to the application or use of scientific principles to a design methodology, we discuss a series of different principles. There are more (the law of thermodynamics is an interesting one to try this with as is survival of the fittest). Keeping to only one design principle, ideology or approach allows for the potential for you to miss different ideas that may be far better t...

It's easy. Are you complete with your work? Yes? Then you have been inconsistent. Does that statement hold true throughout? I really hope not. In design, however, it holds up well and is a good lesson to keep in mind. Also becomes it implies that you are never done in design if you have been consistent, which is a sad truth (there is always more you can do). Hosted incompletely because of consiste...

The original approach to this topic was schrodingers cat. The idea being that after you complete a design it is both a failure and a pass until someone looks at it. That got depressing quickly and required much toast to pull us out of that slump. Following on from us wanting to not consider the future submissions that are yet to be we moved onto the principle of not getting distracted with things...

No more interuptions. Just good ol' design of the ultimate gardening system, now with added pest seek and destroy action and the ability to hover. When we look back at what happened and how the machines took over we have only the weeds to blame.  But what if you used sunlight to burn out the unwanted life in the garden? What if there has been enough ran to turn the ground into mud and the des...

To interupt or not interupt. To account for every "what if" during the design or to run on with it and hope it works out later.  It has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand it stops you running ahead with the really bad ideas and wasting too much time but on the other hand it means that when all you wanted is a coffee machine you somehow end up figuring out how to both hard boil...

It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of a person's fears and the summit of their knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Toasting Design. Completely off topic as usual by M. Boer and S. Schekman on 1 September 2020 Key words: Functional considerations, design considerations, problem...

You can define a function as the action for which a person or thing is specially fitted or used or for which a thing exists or any of a group of related actions contributing to a larger action. Does that help you understand it better? It doesn't for me but thats mostly because design doesn't work by dictionary definitions and when dealing with functions on your designs there are different and vari...

It's been said before but Design needs time. Time to review your ideas and critically evaluate your decisions (should you really have used a dog sled as inspiration for your martian rover? - no. No you should not have). Time is also necessary when coming up with ideas and tackling problems and choices with the full spectrum of tools/skills/options at your designs proposal - did you consider using...

You are designing a bicycle to compete against a standard off the shelf model. In competing you need to know what information is required to begin your design and ensure that it succeeds (i.e. solves the problem). What do you need? The water bottle size that be accomodated? The pressure required to activate the breaks? The seat density? The material density of the pedals? None, right? (yes that is...

Did we design a new form of research? Well no (that should be obvious). Did we design the original research? Again no (that would be impossible without time travel). Did you not ask these questions? Oh. Well that's different then. Did we apply design in our own research. Yes. You can't not do that. You can apply design really badly in your own research but you certainly cant get out of it complete...

In retrospect the issue with the final idea proposed within has a major problem. The parents are likely to want to play just as much as the kids. That may have been an overlooked matter. No Jeremy's were harmed in the recording of this episode (and yes, there are multiple Jeremy's) Hosted by ignoring the constraints and requirements of M. Boer and S. Schekman on 4th August 2020 Keys: URS, PRS, req...

Having developed the playground swing set it was noted that the enclosure was sufficiently airtight that a child would only have 2 minutes of oxygen before he/she would pass out and the next child could get a turn. In hindsight the consdiration of the parents and owner of the grounds should have been taken into account as pit underneath the swing was, based on a survey, found to be unethical in th...

Let's get to the point, no more meandering about, no more senseless discussion on whether Jeremy or Burt is worse human being, stop the unnecessary reminagining of the their backstories. Plain and simply: we talk about design. Also Jeremy is the worse person. Hosted quickly and concisely by M. Boer and S. Schekman on 30 July 2020 Keys: writing concisely, unnecessary content in a report, how to app...

August is Women's month and we thought we would tackle the serious topic of gender based violence in the context of engineering design. Hosted by M. Boer, T. Mangera and S. Schekman Keys: Importance of problem identification, focusing on the problem, considering worst case scenarios,

In this stunning conclusion to the long awaited discussion we in no way meet your very limited expectations. What we do instead is talk about design and design projects. It really is (pun intended) our bread and butter. That pun is enough to make me want to change the name of this podcast to breading design but that just sounds like we are dipping design in bread crumbs to deep fry. Admittedly we...

What do you do when first given a design project? After the obligatory whimper, obviously. Are you asking the good questions or are you immediately looking for the loopholes and ways to make your life easier? Finding and exploiting loopholes can help and is a part of design but they have their place. I also assure you that students of design know how to find loopholes. So instead we discuss the pr...

Concepts are probably the best part about engineering design. The consideration of alternative options are the reason we have tank treads instead of just wheels, aluminium skinned aircraft instead of fabric covered ones and choosing your next cellphone can be time consuming. So its a big topic to discuss and delve into and one we will undoubtably return to in the future. Hosted instead by Burt Rus...

Fire. Fire good! Fire fun! But sometimes it's not and when it's not then the fun needs to found in ways of stopping/controlling/manipulating it. When doing you will have options. Different ways of stopping/controlling/manipulating the energy. And when it comes to design, your options are your concepts. So let's do come up with some ideas. Hosted through the imagination of the imaginary Jeremy by M...

There is more than one way to fillet a fish, there is more than one way to introduce the podcast and there is more than one way to back flip off a car in a high speed pursuit so that you land on the car behind you and use the impact to propel you up the side of the building. Okay so maybe not that last one but it is important to always consider your options. When it comes to generating options or...