Engineering Systems Design Goals and Stakeholder Needs

The engineering systems covered by this book are complex socio-technical systems. Their complexity results from two key characteristics: the technical complexity in their physical manifestations and the elaborate processes, usually operated by people, needed to realise, use, and support such systems through life. Although engineering design tends to focus on technical aspects of these physical manifestations, it is the delivery of the associated processes, e.g., realisation, use, and through-life support, which create value (or frustration) for stakeholders. For this reason, understanding the needs of stakeholders who participate in these processes is critical to the success of the overall system. In this chapter, we consider how one might go about understanding stakeholder needs and formulating engineering system design goals. Three overarching approaches to the design of engineering systems (user-driven design, designer-driven design, and systems engineering) are introduced, and examples of their application to practical design work are provided through three design case studies. One case study relates to the design of a surgical device and the second to the design of a knowledge management system, and the third considers how the approaches introduced in this chapter might be applied when designing in response to sustainable development goals.