Designing Engineers

Louis L. Bucciarelli

$79.99

Paperback

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English

MIT Press
31 January 1996

Industrial applications of scientific research & technological innovation; Impact of science & technology on society; Technical design

Series: Inside Technology

Designing Engineers describes the evolution of three disparate projects- an x-ray inspection system for airports, a photoprint machine, and a residential photovoltaic energy system.

The products of engineering design are everywhere, but who or what determines their form and function? Their surfaces are usually cold, seemingly objective, as if they existed outside of history of the technologies that are so much a part of our lives. Written by a practicing engineer, Designing Engineers yields clues to this mystery by probing deeply into the everyday world of engineering. In doing so, it reveals significant discrepancies between our ideal image of design as an instrumental process and the reality of design as a historically situated social process that is full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Designing Engineers describes the evolution of three disparate projects- an x-ray inspection system for airports, a photoprint machine, and a residential photovoltaic energy system. In each case, we are taken through the hallways and into the meeting rooms of the company to watch over the shoulders of engineers as they engage in the manifold individual and collective work that goes into designing a new product. Louis Bucciarelli was a consultant to one project and participated in the design process for the other two. In all three projects he examines both object - the way participants understood how things work - and process - the way they go about designing. What he learns is that engineering design is a social process that involves constant negotiation among many parties, not just engineers but marketing people, research scientists, accountants, and customers as well. One of the strengths of the book is the way Bucciarelli uses the very language of engineering discourse to uncover the many levels at which negotiation takes place. Designing, it turns out, is as much about agreeing on definitions as it is about producing ""hard"" artifacts.

By: Louis L. Bucciarelli
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 318g
ISBN: 9780262522120
ISBN 10: 0262522128
Series: Inside Technology
Pages: 232
Publication Date: 31 January 1996
Recommended Age: From 18
Audience: Adult education , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Tertiary & Higher Education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Wiebe E. Bijker is Professor at Maastricht University and the author of Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (MIT Press) and other books. Trevor Pinch is Goldwin Smith Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and coeditor of The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (anniversary edition, MIT Press).

Reviews for Designing Engineers

"""Bucciarelli's vigorous, humane intelligence sheds new light on theinner dynamics of technological choice. This book is truly oneof a kind."" Langdon Winner, author of The Whale and the Reactor"

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Designing Engineers

Louis L. Bucciarelli

$79.99

Paperback

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