My method is better!

Excerpt

Engineering Design is an activity where what you want to create and how you want to create are fundamental to the underlying process. Both aspects of this activity require selection among alternatives that are intertwined. In engineering, how a problem is defined and the creation and selection of alternatives are the focus of methods performed in a team. How do we carry it out, are we content with the outcome, can we do it better, are important questions to address. These questions have been studied to varying depths in many disciplines including psychology,¹ neurosciences,² economics,³ management,⁴ non-fiction literature,⁵ and engineering.⁶ While we are interested in engineering design contexts, which might be different from other non-engineering contexts, these questions transcend most disciplinary boundaries. In design, there are always many alternative solutions, some of which await discovery and some of which may require additional knowledge for it to work. The choice of multiple criteria for evaluating each alternative, and the specific selection are decided in a team process comprising of participants from diverse disciplines including those that are non-technical. …