Book Reviews

New product development: an introduction to a

multifunctional process

Tim Jones, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 1997,

£17.99, 134 +xv pp, ISBN 0 7506 2427 2

Successful new product development is a vital mat-

ter for any manufacturer, in which design plays a

key and central role. Of course, as well as what

is traditionally regarded as the 'design' function,

success also depends on many other, equally

important functions, such as production engineer-

ing, marketing and distribution. This book is based

on a model of new product development in which

the many functions are integrated in participative

organization, with the lead role changing as a new

product develops from inception, through creation

to realization.

The book is organized very simply into a brief

Introduction which outlines this integrated model

of new product development, and then four chap-

ters which extend aspects of this outline in more

depth. These chapters are: (1)New product devel-

opment strategy; (2)Innovation; (3)Organization

for new product development; (4)Rapid product

development. Each chapter provides a brief review

of the current state of knowledge relevant to its

title, and has an extended case study that demon-

strates some recent practice of this theory. The case

studies are: (1)Rover 600 motorcar; (2)Flymo

Gardenvac cleaner; (3)Logitech Mouseman Sensa

computer mouse; (4) Polaroid Spectra instant cam-

era. The case studies are well-written, up-to-date

and informative, and complement well the preced-

ing theory sections which are relatively standard

expositions of current ideas.

ELSEVIER

Written for a wide range of readers~designers,

engineers, marketing personnel and managers--the

book is accessible to that wide audience. It pro-

vides a good introduction to new product develop-

ment for anyone to whom integrated product devel-

opment or concurrent engineering is still novel, but

perhaps it does not have enough depth to add much

to the knowledge of others. It would be a good

introductory text for students of design manage-

ment, and helps show students of design, engineer-

ing and marketing how their roles interact. It is a

pity that the design of the book itself does not pro-

vide a better example of new product develop-

ment--i ts small and dense typefaces obscuring the

clarity of the message of the words.

Nigel Cross

Understanding engineering design: context, theory,

and practice

Richard Birmingham, Graham Cleland, Robert

Driver and David Maffin, Prentice Hall, London,

1997, £18.95, 159 + xiv pp, ISBN 0 13 525650 X

Compared with architects, fashion designers and

graphic designers, engineering designers--also

known as engineers--are held in low esteem by a

public whose perception is one of rather boring,

technical and socially inadequate people. There are

several reasons for this. Engineering organisations,

unlike architectural and product design organis-

ations, are not usually design-led, they do not have

a designer at the helm so to speak, more likely a

'businessman', 'financier' or 'entrepreneur'. Most

engineering products are also extremely complex

systems, the result of many people's input and

0142-694X/98 $19.00 Design Studies 19 (1998) 119-121 PII: S0142-694X(97)00000-0 © 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain

119

evolving only gradually at each new product

launch (whoever did design the Ford Escort'?).

Engineering products are not then equated with

individual engineering designers in the same way

that either fashion designers or architects are asso-

ciated with their oeuvre. The reason for saying this

is that one suspects a possible motivation for

Understanding engineering design was to further

the cause of the lowly engineering designer, maybe

even in some way to infuse ~personality' into

engineering design, a move that would surely go

some way to ease the falling number of students

embarking on a currently unfashionable career in

engineering.

Understanding engineering design is aimed as a

'primer' for an engineering student audience. The

natural consequence of this is that, for an academic

audience, the extended scope of the subject matter

means that nothing is really treated in sufficient

depth. The book also professes to be a reference

guide, although as a source book the references

might better have been structured by subject area.

As an introduction to engineering design, a coher-

ent view of an often disparate subject is presented.

In terms of content, the book looks firstly at the

organisational context of the engineering designer,

addressing issues such as the role of innovation in

engineering design. This is lollowed by a historical

look at the design methods literature and the con-

clusion that hybrid prescriptive/descriptive models

most satisfactorily capture the engineering design

process. Finally, a section on the practice of engin-

eering design focuses on the technologies currently

available to aid in the design process describing,

for example, recent developments in CAD, and

detailing techniques such as quality function

deployment (QFD).

In some ways, the book does succeed in making

engineering design look, well, interesting. Several

short case studies add texture to otherwise repeti-

tive prose. James Dyson's dual cyclone vacuum

cleaner makes a cameo appearance and elsewhere

there is interesting material on the shipbuilding

industry (one of the authors, Richard Birmingham,

is a lecturer in marine technology). Overall, how-

ever, the engineering designer comes across as a

curiously remote, emotionally neutral and passive

figure. 'It is clear that the designer is subject to

many influences of which some are direct, while

others are more subtle."

As well as the emergence of engineering design as

a rather impersonal activity in the book, there is an

underlying assumption that niggles away during

the course of reading. This surfaces briefly in a

chapter entitled 'Recent developments in theories

of design' and is something akin to 'scientific pin-

ing'. Engineering is often seen, from within and

without, as a kind of scientific residue, the bastard

(but useful) offspring of physical science. This is

a certain feeling that engineering should really be

scientific, but 'oh what the hell, lets just see if it

works'. In the main, engineering as a subject does

manage to keep up this scientific facade; engineer-

ing design, however, does not. Implicit in Under- standing engineering design is the mistaken notion

that 'design [is] in a pre-science phase' and 'a per-

iod of directed research [is] essential if design [is]

to become a mature science'. Theories of design

hanker after 'hard' science: hypothesis, quantifi-

cation, measurement, falsification, replication and,

as the authors point out, design methods are often

posited as a route to this goal.

There is much evidence to suggest just the

opposite: that design is a qualitatively different

kind of activity from science ~ and should be under-

stood in the particular, through individual and

social reflection of design product in relation to

design process. Architectural design, for example,

is in many ways a reflective subject, with little tol-

erance for scientific salvation. This is why the case

studies in the book work well, the particular illus-

trates far better than the general--and the sub-

120 Design Studies Vol 19 No 1 January 1998

sequent lapse into platitude--the social com-

plexities of engineering design. (In a similar way,

one is left with a far greater understanding of archi-

tectural design having read Bryan Lawson's case

descriptions of architects in Design in mine[ 2, or of

engineering design having read Louis Bucciarelli's

Designing engineers, 3 than of engineering design

having read Understanding engineering design.)

In conclusion then, the engineering student may

learn something of engineering innovation, or find

out what a design theory looks like, take in a

smidgeon of design for manufacture, or a pinch of

engineering data management, but Understanding

engineering design does not tell us what it is to be

an engineering designer.

Peter Lloyd

1 cross N, Naughton J and Walker D 'Design method and scientific method' Design Studies Vol 2, No 4 (1981) pp 195-210 2 Lawson B Design in mind, Butterworth Architecture, Oxford, UK (1994) 3 Bucciarelli LL Designing engineers MIT Press, Cambridge, USA (1994)

Book reviews 121