Conference on Electronics Design : Report in Electronics Weekly, 17th February 1965 (RHS)

TRAINING FOR

DESIGNING

First session chairman Dr. R.C.G. Williams: "The glamour of research must result in well-designed end products."

Continued from LHS:-

The better teams normally seem to be considering at the same time only two possible solution, whereas less successful teams tend to pursue three at a time.

It has been shown that the better teams tend to spend more time seeking out information at the beginning of the project, and that in all cases there tends to be a second peak in the use of information services later when running into difficulties.

Mr. W.D. Mallinson made suggestions as to which design characteristics must be emphasised for various types of applications and Mr J.L. Bliss spoke on the work of the BBC Designs Department.

Considerable interest was also shown in two papers by Prof M.H.N. Potok (Royal Military College of Science) and Mr A.R. Owens (University College of North Wales) who both described project techniques to encourage students to learn about the actual processes of creative design.

At Shrivenham officers being trained for technical staff duties spend time working in small teams on design exercises involving building a piece of equipment to a given but flexible specification and finally have to present the finished equipment before invited experts.

ENTHUSIASM

Mr. Owens showed how much the same idea, but for individuals, could be applied to university studies. The projects aroused such enthusiasm that it had sometimes been found necessary to lock the projects laboratory at 5.30 pm to force students back to their books.

As Mr. Owens put it, the undergraduates learnt to make their first mistakes in the college laboratories - and at least know how to solder.

More seriously, he pointed out that by teaching circuits as a synthesised process one is often repeating the original work. The university is anxious to cooperate with industry in planning suitable projects.

All papers came under lively discussion with a fairly clear divergence of opinion between those who felt that design could be taught and those who felt it was something one was born with and best developed in contact with experienced engineers.

But on one point there was agreement - the UK provided insufficient recognition of engineering ability. One American group is attempting to overcome this by promoting its better engineers to be paid consultants.