On February 25, 2016, the Eastern North Carolina chapter of PENC (Professional Engineers of North Carolina) held a joint event with engineering students at ECU (East Carolina University). Brian Sylcott (Assistant Professor at ECU) spoke on “Accommodating Subjective Preference in Engineering Design”. As engineers, we have traditionally focused on function when designing products but it’s becoming increasingly a balance between form and function.
His talk had three different parts:
- Representation: In his research, he looked at how we make product decisions based on sketches, CAD drawings, and plastic models. Our decisions tend to vary based on how products are presented to us.
- Form and Function: Some products are primarily purchased on function (e.g. folding chair, shopping cart). Others are purchased primarily for form (e.g. watches, door knobs). But many of the products we purchase are a mix of the two, and we balance form and function in many of those decisions. He has done several surveys presenting different automobile options to individuals and seeing how those individuals balance the form and function of each.
- Cognitive Research: He has recently started using fMRI to see exactly what is going on inside the brain when we make such form vs. function decisions. He’s found a few locations that are activated during the process of weighing options and making a decision. More research to come!
It was a very interesting talk, and I’ll be interested to see where his research goes from here. I suspect that many product development companies will be interested as well. If it’s known how we make decisions, companies can potentially use that activation to affect those decisions!
Thank you to PENC and ECU for hosting this event!
