Conceptual Design of Means of Transport Harnessing Human Power - New Contributions in Information Systems and Technologies - page 344

Conceptual Design of Means of Transport Harnessing
Human Power

Damian Derlukiewicz and Mariusz Ptak

Wroclaw University of Technology, Department of Machine Design and Research,
Lukasiewicza 7/9, 50-371 Wroclaw, Poland
{damian.derlukiewicz,mariusz.ptak}@pwr.edu.pl

Abstract. The article presents the conceptual design process on the example of
the means of transport that use human muscle power. The article shows the
sources of inspiration for designers and the results of the design process on the
example of an interdisciplinary project “Creative Design”. The aim of the
project was to generate the design concepts by developing the creativity skills.
The studies described in the paper resulted in the design of the innovation mean
of transport using human muscle power.

Keywords: creative design, human-powered transport, HMI (human-machine
interface), conceptual design, computer-aided design, inspiration.

1 Introduction

Conceptual design has become essential in the successful implementation of
construction projects in industrial plants. Firms perceive that key decisions taken at an
early stage of conceptual design of engineering tasks have a tremendous impact on the
performance of the entire plant [1, 2].
The most general definition of the design gives [3, 4], where the design is a process
that leads to human activities, from the initial state (the problem to solve - the need to
meet) to the final state, which is the desired result (system = an article, object,
organization, process or computer program) that meets the established requirements.
In general, any design process must be carried out depending on the intended
system: technical, socio-cultural, organizational. Hence, there will be some
differences in the elements of the design and the process implementation. Fig.1
depicts the conceptual design process.
It should be noted that during the entire process, it is necessary to continuously
collect information. The process of conceptual design typically consists of several
stages:

1. Understanding of the problem with internalisation of the main requirements;

2. Understanding of the requirements;

3. Identification and creation of a wide range of alternatives that relate to the

source of the problem and requirements;

4. Evaluation of alternative solutions and combination of the best features of all

taken into consideration;