Design of Design - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 begins with an introduction to what the author calls The Rational Model. He describes this as "how engineers think of design." The Rational Model has several components: a primary goal, secondary goals, optimization, constraints, and resource allocation. Using these components, the designer can make a design tree. The design tree is the illustration of the different possible paths created by increasingly narrowing decisions about your design. The author points out that this tree can be operated on in the same way that any other tree data structure can be. The step-by-step design process model was developed in the community of German mechanical engineers. It has since been built upon by people such as Winston Royce, who created the seven-step Waterfall Model. The chapter closes with a paragraph explaining some of the benefits of using the Rational Model.