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Section 4 Problem Solving and Design in Technology
The term rough is not used to describe
the quality of the drawing. Rough sketches
are not necessarily crude. They often rep-
resent good sketching techniques. The
term rough describes the state of the design
ideas. This term suggests that the designs
are incomplete and unrefined.
Isolating and Refining
Design Solutions
The rough sketches allow designers
to capture a wide variety of solutions for
the design problem or opportunity. The
sketches are similar to books in a library.
They contain a number of different
thoughts, views, and ideas. These sketches
can be selected, refined, grouped together,
or broken apart.
Isolating and refining original designs
in the “library of ideas” is the second
step in developing a design solution. See
Figure 10-10. Promising ideas are chosen
and then studied and improved. This pro-
cess might involve working with one or
more good rough sketches. The size and
shape of the product or structure might be
changed and improved. Details might be
added, and the shape might be reworked.
In short, the design is becoming refined as
problems are worked out and the propor-
tions become more balanced.
Refined design ideas might also be
developed by merging ideas from two or
more rough sketches into a refined sketch.
The overall shape might come from one
sketch, and specific details might come
from others. This approach is one of inte-
gration, which blends the different ideas
into a unified whole. The new idea might
not look at all similar to the original rough
sketches.
Detailing Design
Solutions
Rough and refined sketches do not tell
the whole story. Look back at the sketches
shown in Figure 10-10. What size is the
product in the sketch? You cannot tell. The
Figure 10-10. Refined sketches are used to develop ideas captured with rough sketches.
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