Improve & Optimize

The sixth step in the Engineering Design Process is to improve your design. You will redesign the prototype by repeating the design process in order to further optimize the design. You'll figure out how your design can be improved, what needs to be changed or optimized, etc. Using your evaluation from Step 5, you will now go through the Engineering Design Process again to refine your design solution. During the "Improve" step, you will:

Reconsider any discarded ideas
Record your findings and a plan to improve
Improve on the initial design, make adjustments, changes, try something new, etc.
Look for any mathematical relationships and use them to identify the factors that affect the design the most
If your prototype worked well, figure out how it can be improved; if your prototype didn't work well, figure out what needs to be changed
Learn from failure and try again!
Go through the Engineering Design Process again...and again...and again...until you develop the best solution
- Further optimize your design
  - Optimization: continuously improving something to make it the best or most effective solution

Improve

Failure

A huge part of engineering and problem solving is failing. And guess what...Failure is Okay! A very successful engineering and product design company, IDEO, has the motto: "Fail often in order to succeed sooner." Failure is all part of the learning process. Failure is also a major part of problem solving. As mentioned in Step 5 - Test & Evaluate, oftentimes we will test our designs until they fail so that we can learn how to make them better. We can learn what doesn't work so that we can discover what does work. Watch the video below to learn why failure is important:

You Failed.mp4

Innovation

Step 6 - Improve is the most important step when it comes to innovation. An innovation is an improvement upon an existing invention or product. Many - if not most - of the products and systems we enjoy today are all innovations based upon existing inventions. For example, a laptop could be considered an innovation based upon the original computer (invention). Successful companies utilize the Engineering Design Process (whether they realize it or not...) to constantly improve their products and services. Apple is a great example of this. As soon as a new iPhone is announced, they are already working on an even better iPhone (i.e. iPhone all the way up to the iPhone XS and XR). The importance of innovation is the reason why technology is advancing at an exponential rate and why so many incredible things are able to happen. The Engineering Design Process makes all these things possible! It is the tool that engineers, designers, inventors, and everyone else uses to make our world a better place!

Continue to Examples of the Engineering Design Process in Use