Design Phases vs. Design Spiral

I recently came across this Design Spiral from Van Oossanen Naval Architects.

It also seems to align well with the Design Spiral image I previously uploaded (from the book Naval Architecture, see above) and @Ad Hoc comments.

 

Congratulations, it seems something like Van Oossanen has validated your work procedure. Now you just need to learn the various stages of that spiral, in other words, learn to design boats.
We know that you make spectacular 3D models in Rhino, but precisely that step does not appear, at least explicitly, in the design spiral. Either it is masked in one of the stages or it is not considered necessary.
Cheer up and move forward!

 

When I was in the auto industry we sometimes described the design process for new vehicles as "coarse to fine". 90% or more of the work was in the latter phases as the details were refined and tooling designs released, but 80% to 90% of the major decisions were made in the initial phases.

 

Lifted straight from Larsson & Elliason (probably violating a bunch of copyright rules):



Not a yacht designer, but OK - makes sense. Contract amounts and client willingness to spend more money for more iterations would be the limiting factor (paraphrasing jhardiman). Reworking parts of the work based on revisions to other parts may be trivial or may be major. Maybe a 3-turn spiral and a bigger loop in the center (convergence 'area' instead of a convergence 'point') is more realistic?

Working in exhibit design, prototyping, and production for museums, the process is perhaps more along the lines of DCockey's experience (with a few caveats):

• 50% of the project budget spent in 'experience design and development' with very few critical decisions resolve
• 80% of the 'real work' happens with the remaining 50% of the budget in the last 50% of the project duration.

That is the snide-but-real version when a project team and client are put together of folks all of who want to be designers or content experts. With good project management, the right team, and a reasonable client, the process can be fluid, invigorating, and move forward most of the time (TANSL's 3 steps forward - 1 step back at the beginning, and better as you proceed...)

 

For the auto design projects I was involved with only a small portion of the budget and time were spent in the initial phases, more in "design" (styling) than product engineering and less in manufacturing engineering.

 

@DCockey - makes sense. As mentioned, my reply was a bit snide! In any discipline the % of time spent per phase and amount of reiteration possible is limited by budget. In a bad project, someone gets called in to help sort stuff out almost too late in the game. Design spirals and phase descriptions may differ based on type of work, but I bet we can agree there are great projects with great results, and projects we'd rather forget. And for most if not all, everyone shakes hands in the end because it's a small world and we need to work again tomorrow!

 

In my experience 90% of the time and money is just working to wring the last 10% out of the design. Considering that less than 5% of the design cost is profit....you need to be smart, but brutal, when calling the end to the design phase.

 

Yep. And that 5% margin is often the difference between passion for the subject matter or project at hand vs 'good enough.'

 

<shrug> Depends on what the "answer" is....for speed 90% may be "good enough"...for stability it is not.

 

I get it. But at some point, someone other than you will likely say the money has run out. If it's our own passion project, without a contract, someone else saying 'you're done,' or concerns about keeping an income stream, we can think about it for as long as we wish.

 

Indeed.
And yet...very very few fully understand this!

 

Without being glib, jhardiman are you pointing out a little more or less speed isn't a deal-breaker compared to the likelihood of capsizing? Stuff like that is not just a matter of analysis, but also of prioritization? That, and some problems are easier to estimate to accurately more than others. I'd rather be sure no one gets hurt than that they understand a concept, as different as our disciplines may be.

 

<sigh> What I mean is that a designer that doesn't make speed is soon consigned to the ash heap of history, while a designer that kills ...one,several, many,.... people is held up for the ages as an example of what not to do.