Designing Engineers

by Louis L. Bucciarelli

Answers the question of how the products we use every day products of engineering design came to be the way they are, from conceptualization to production. Bucciarelli, engineer and educator, views engineering design as a socially-defined enterprise; here, he reveals the various levels of human negotiation and contribution necessary to create a product through an examination of three design projects in which he was involved. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Engineering, Design, Nonfiction

232 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1994

Reviews

[Lorin Hochstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does the work of engineering design actually look like? Bucciarelli set out to answer that question by doing an ethnographic study of engineering firms, to watch design in action.

What he found was that engineering design work is a social process. It doesn't just take place in the solitary work of individual engineers, but also in meetings and hallway discussions. It involves negotiation of many different things, including the meaning terms and the problem being solved. Engineering design a messy process that involves contingency and power dynamics: a design might be changed based on whether a particular stakeholder is absent one day, or whether a particular tool was in use and so a workaround was needed.

Most fascinatingly, this messy, social aspect to engineering work isn't visible to the engineers themselves. They don't see these interactions as part of engineering design work. But it is.

This book is an enormous contribution to the field of understanding the nature of engineering design work. It's become one of my favorite books of all time. Can't recommend it enough.

[Smitesh Bakrania · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author writes, "The object [of design] is not one thing to all participants. Each individual's perspective and interests are rooted in his or her special expertise and responsibilities. Designing is a process of bringing coherence to these perspectives and interests, fixing them in the artifact. Participants work to bring their efforts into harmony through negotiation." This summarizes the premise of the book. The book provides three detailed examples to support this idea and presents a window into the design process within an engineering firm. Good book for someone who is curious about how engineering design actually happens.

[Jan D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was relatively easy to read and very interesting. It is rather descriptive but puts its observations in useful theoretical concepts. A core assertion is that engineering culture focuses on the idea of underlying, physical, "true"principles in the creation of an artifact; other views are pushed aside – however, politics, emotions… are very relevant in the artifact's creation.

[Luis Enrico Nicolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book invites us to look at engineering not just as a technical activity, but as a human process—messy, collaborative, iterative, and full of compromise.

He reveals that design isn't born in isolation or clean CAD drawings. It’s shaped through meetings, disagreements, trade-offs, deadlines, and the subtle push and pull between engineers, managers, clients, and tools. It shows that engineers don’t just apply science—they negotiate it into reality. A social practice. One that must ask:

How do we make decisions?

Whose voices are heard in the design process?

What constraints are technical, and which are organizational or cultural?

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can see my review of this book on my blog: http://tinyurl.com/y8able5

[Yushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old STS book but still is useful.