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Old 09-03-2013, 07:31 AM   #30
Great Laker
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City: Spring Lake, MI
Vessel Name: Great Laker
Vessel Model: American Tug 34
Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 346
Quote:
Originally Posted by manyboats View Post

And I didn't mean to imply that Great Laker said anything untrue. I took a course on design in college and we concluded (after a weeks debate) that design was "an organized solution to a problem".
A few more thoughts on "design".

A design is derived from requirements. What is to be designed?

Good requirements are directly verifiable. For example: shall be 40-42 feet long, have twin diesels, and use no more than 2 gph at 8 knots. Some requirements may be somewhat ambiguous and not directly verifiable. For example: shall have long sleek lines, or shall be beautiful to behold.

If you give the requirements indepently to 10 designers, you would get 10 different designs all of which meet the directly verifiable requirements. (In fact, there are an infinite number of unique designs that could be generated that meet the directly verifiable requirements.)

At the same time, people reviewing these designs would find some more "beautiful" than others. These are subjective opinions.

A company that is selecting a design to invest and built for sale, should pick one that they believe, based on market surveys or previous experience, would be viewed as "fit for purpose" by their potential buyers.

In my case, I concluded that the American Tug 34 best met all of my requirements for a boat to do the Great Loop, and I loved the look! Incidentally, I might have passed on the AT if I didn't like the "look", so the "somewhat ambiguous" requirements can be the most important (think iphone or ipad).
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American Tug 34 - Great Laker, and Gold Looper
Home port on the vast unsalted Lake Michigan
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