About Me
My name is Alex and I am a mechanical design engineer specialising in product design and development. I have over four years experience in this industry working for both national and international clients in the consumer and industrial products sectors.
I started out my career in October 2018 during my second year of A levels. I had no experience in this industry so started entering contests on a site called freelancer.com. This enabled me to gain a lot of experience quickly through trial and error. Once I started winning contests I applied for some projects which lead to me being accepted to a site called Upwork. Here I sent countless proposals for jobs with only a few responding and even fewer hiring me. Eventually, as I started completing jobs and gaining a good reputation, I started to get hired for more jobs which lead to me receiving Top Rated status while maintaining my 100% Job Success Score.
Design Approach
I use an iterative approach to product design and development. This ensures client feedback is considered throughout the entirety of the project which leads to better outcomes overall.
The first stage for any product design and development project is to define the requirements, both functional and aesthetic. This helps clarify the project expectations and ensures everyone is on the same page. Once the requirements have been agreed on, the next stage is concept generation. This involves sketching and 3D visualisation to illustrate a range of potential solutions that will satisfy the previously defined requirements. Concept selection is the next stage of the project and can be completed using a variety of decision making tools including Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and other matrix based decision tools. I have found that whatever method is being used to analyse possible concepts, the most important thing is discussion between the various stakeholders. Without discussion the decision analysis will not be accurate and the chosen concept may not be the most suitable.
Once a final concept has been selected, the iterative process can begin. Using industry standard Computer Aided Design (CAD) software, I will create an initial design that can be reviewed by the client and any relevant stakeholders. Using feedback I will make changes to create a new design iteration. This feedback and iteration will continue until a full prototype design has been created. This physical prototype then undergoes physical testing and more iterations occur if needed.