PEMP- APD2508

Vehicle Concept Design

Module Leader
Prof. C. Gopinath
Prof. C. Gopinath

HOD
Dept. of Design

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Session Objectives
– At the end of this session the students would have
understood
• Concept generation and it importance.
• Different ways of exploring the ideas.
• Brain storming method to explore concept ideas
• Create Concept sketches / Importance of concept.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• A concept is a general idea or something conceived in
the mind.
• An integral part of the creative design process is
ideation, the generation of concepts or ideas to solve a
design problem.
• Freehand sketching can be used to explore and
communicate mental concepts that come about in the
mind’s eye.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• A sketch is a rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not
usually intended as a finished work.
• It might record or develop an idea for later use or it might be
used
• Quick way of graphically demonstrating an image.
• Sketching is the idea or thoughts in our mind that you need put
down on paper.

• Sketching is a powerful means of interpersonal communication.

Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation Doodle sketches
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• It is important to keep in mind that during the
development/exploration process you are exploring the
many possible solutions for a problem.
• You should explore your thoughts in a way that allows
you to get the most out of your time.
• Its about quantity, quality, and letting your ideas flow
onto the paper and develop into thoughtful solutions.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• As a designer every day think of generating the concepts
and explore about ideas, not about presentation.
• Designer make the effort to deliver clear sketches that
fully convey your thoughts.
• Create as many doodle sketches as possible finalize the
concepts in sketching stage before going digital
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• Great innovators, then, don’t seem to care about having
remarkable ideas: all they care about is having ideas – any
ideas, lots and lots of them, anywhere and at anytime.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• Einstein is famous for his theory of relativity, but he
published 248 other papers.
• Thomas Edison held nothing less than 1093 patents.
Imagine, then the amount of his non-patented work…
Prof. C. Gopinath

Incandsent bulb Tube light Light emitting diodes

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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Using Thumbnails
• Generate a lot of small thumbnail sketches of 50 mm by 75mm
size to collect and test visual ideas.
• It helps in collecting interesting bits and scraps that might be
developed into something even more interesting.
Prof. C. Gopinath

Here a number of quick thumbnails, sketched quickly on the spot,

and a larger version of one that showed potential
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Expect to Have Ideas

•The first step is to get rid of common beliefs such as

“I’m not a creative person”.
• Drop any preconceived notions that ideas are reserved
just for a privileged few.
• That’s often enough to have ideas start coming to you.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Welcome Dumb Ideas, or Any Ideas for That Matter
• Your focus should never be on having great ideas.
• Always strive for quantity, most people don’t ever try having ideas
• Ideas that are regarded as dumb today may be the
foundation for a groundbreaking idea tomorrow.
• When you eventually have such an idea, nobody will remember
your less successful ones.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Expose Yourself to New Experiences

• Your senses capture the basic information that your mind

uses to generate associations.
• The more you expose yourself to different situations,
people and places, the more fuel you will give to your
mind to make connections and learn to welcome variety
in your life:
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Capture the Ideas Immediately
• Get in the habit of capturing all your ideas. Use a paper
notebook, PDA or voice recorder.

• If you don’t capture your ideas the minute they come up, it’s
guaranteed you’ll forget most of them – even worse, you
won’t even be aware that you had ideas in the first place.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Be Thankful for Ideas
• Every time you have an idea – any idea – be thankful for
it, by developing this habit, you create an additional
positive reinforcement that works as a “pat on the back”
of your mind, encouraging it to produce even more ideas.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• Realize that Ideas Come in Bursts
• It’s perfectly normal to go through several days and
not having one single idea.
• But then, suddenly, ideas will come to you one after
another, just like a surging river.
• Don’t worry about the natural slow times, but make
sure that you take full advantage of those idea bursts
when they come.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Brainstorming

• Brain storming is a technique of generating many idea with the

hope that a few good ideas will develop something workable
• Brainstorming is a group activity.
• The ideas of one member group stimulate creativity in another
member.
• A successful sessions generally involve at least three people not
more than fifteen
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Brainstorming
• Combines a relaxed, informal approach to problem-solving with
lateral thinking. It asks that people come up with ideas and thoughts
that can at first seem to be a bit crazy.
• During brainstorming sessions there should therefore be no
criticism of ideas:
Judgments and analysis at this stage stunt idea generation.
• Ideas should only be evaluated at the end of the brainstorming
session – this is the time to explore solutions further using
conventional approaches.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Individual Brainstorming
• Brainstorm on your own, you'll tend to produce a wider
range of ideas than with group brainstorming - you do not
have to worry about other people's egos or opinions, and
can therefore be more freely creative.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Brainstorming
• For example, you might find that an idea you’d be hesitant to
bring up in a group session develops into something quite
special when you explore it with individual brainstorming. Nor
do you have to wait for others to stop speaking before you
contribute your own ideas.
• However develop ideas as fully when you brainstorm on your
own, as you do not have the wider experience of other
members of a group to help you.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Group Brain storming
• The advantage of group brainstorming is that it helps
everyone involved to feel that they’ve contributed to the
end solution, and it reminds people that other people have
creative ideas to offer.
What’s more, brainstorming is fun, and it can be great for
team-building!
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Methods of Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Methods of Concept Generation
1. Determine customer requirements for your design
2. Define importance / weighting factors for these
requirements
3. Decide how the team will convey concepts
4. Establish a strong base-case concept
5. Generate MANY concepts
6. Evaluate concepts using a Pugh matrix
7. Identify the best 2-3 new concepts
8. Look for hybrid solutions and identify a new base-case
9. Do a reality check -start over if needed
Prof. C. Gopinath

10.Select a robust concept and move forward

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Concept Generation
• Requirements are functional product or service measures that
directly relate to the customer’s true needs.
• Customers define the ‘what’s’ and the engineering team develops
the ‘how’s’
Ask the customer -communication with your sponsor, input from
their customers, surveys, etc.
Example: Design a transportation Low cost
system to get to class Reliable, year -round
Flexible to class schedule
Short commute time
Comfortable, Safe,
Prof. C. Gopinath

Marketing-fashionable, status symbol

Enviornment friendly
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Weighting factors for the requirements
Not everything is equally important!
Looking at the needs in total, reducing risk of over/under
designing
• Suggest a 1-3-5 scale for low-medium-high importance,
respectively Low cost 5
Example:Design a transportation Reliable, year -round 5
system to get to class
Flexible to class schedule 3
Short commute time 1
Comfortable, Safe, 3,5
Marketing-fashionable, 1
Prof. C. Gopinath

status symbol
Environment friendly 5
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Concept Generation

• A standard way will drive an objective means of

evaluation.
The nature of the design task will help determine a natural
way to display
Examples: Sketches, schematics, process flow maps,
storyboards, Gantt charts
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concepts Evaluation
• Evaluate your concepts using a Pugh matrix

• Pugh matrix–a tool to facilitate the concept evaluation and

selection process
• The base-case gets a score of ‘5’ for each of the customer
requirements
• New concepts are scored relative to the base-case with a 1-5-9
approach: Much worse than the base-case, score a ‘1’
• Roughly equal to the base-case, score a ‘5’
• Much better than the base-case, score a ‘9’

• Work across the matrix for each customer requirement

Prof. C. Gopinath

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Identify the best 2-3 concepts

Telecomm

Fly out of
unication
Customer Importance

transfort
Segway
mobile
Drive

CMX
Snow
Walk

Bike

Bus
requirements weight
factor
Low cost 5 5 1 5 1 5 5 1 1
Reliable, year -round 5 5 5 1 1 5 9 1 5
Flexible to class
3 5 5 5 5 1 9 1 5
schedule
Short commute time 1 5 9 9 5 5 9 9 9
Comfortable, 3 5 9 5 5 9 9 5 5
Safe, 5 5 9 5 5 9 9 9 5
Marketing-fashionable,
1 5 9 9 9 1 1 9 9
status symbol
Prof. C. Gopinath

Environment friendly 5 5 1 5 1 1 5 1 5
28 40 48 44 32 36 56 36 44

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Concept Generation

• Is your new base case realistic?

• Are you missing customer requirements?
• Do you have unnecessary requirements?
• Is the base case weak?
• Team dynamics, effort?
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Sport Bike Helmets - Develpment around new helmet aesthetics.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Car Length Proportions
• If start with proportions it is a big car or a small car or a sports car, you can begin
to separate the wheels by drawing out five wheels long.
• That is a typical wheelbase, when it comes to its length compared to the height of
the wheels.
• If it is a bigger car, that five-wheel length may get a little bit longer, On the other
hand, if it is a shorter, smaller car, it may get a little bit shorter. If it is a sports car or
• A two-door car, that wheelbase might be a little bit closer together.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Car Height Proportions
• The height of the roof compared to the height
of the door – generally, you could break those
two heights up, as the door height is 2/3 and
the roof height is 1/3 of the total height of the
body.
• The bigger side windows and slightly lower
door lines, Currently higher door lines with
lower rooflines are the rage.
• If you are drawing a top-chopped hot rod, the
roofline can be very low; but as a starting
point, until you get a feel of it, you could
break it up into 2/3 and 1/3.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept generation through Box Design Method

Box Design
When drawing cars, the types of cars are typically split up into three
categories

One-box design
Two-box design
Three-box design.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept generation through One Box Method
It covers vehicles like people movers or little transit vans.
Convertibles might also come into the one box category because it is
just one flat box with a windscreen coming out of it.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept generation through Two Box Method

This is as though you have got two boxes stacked on top of each
other – a smaller box stacked onto a bigger box. Cars that fit into this
category are things like SUVs and hatchbacks – cars without a trunk,
essentially.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept generation through Three Box Method
The third category is a three-box design,
and this is as though you have got two
boxes stacked side by side on the ground,
with a third box put on top of them.
This category essentially covers the sedan-
type cars with a trunk.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Details of car
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• The Market segment or vehicle type is determined
before start the concept
•In the concept stage focus on only ideation phase and
market segment associated later
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Technical Details for Concept Generation

Prof. C. Gopinath

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Technical Details for Passenger car

Prof. C. Gopinath

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Technical Details for Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Technical Details for Numerals (Letters)
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Technical Details for Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Technical Details for Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation Method
Copying and Tracing
• Copying and tracing is a very good way to practice – if
you want to draw a particular car in mind, for instance,
rather than struggling with trying to
• Get the proportions right for a particular body style, you
can simply copy and trace the original drawing.
• After nailing down the outline, you can then add your
own wheel design, chop the top, or do whatever you
would like to modify it and come up with your own
drawing.
Prof. C. Gopinath

• The ways to trace a vehicle from drawings or pictures in

magazines or newspapers.
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Methods of Transferring the Image
Transferring
Take the sheet of tracing paper, lay it down over the drawing or over
the photograph that you would like to trace, and just trace the outline
of the vehicle with a soft lead pencil.
Tracing
If you have access to a light box, you can easily trace an image onto
fresh paper. A light box utilizes light shining from behind the image
that you are tracing to help you see the lines. Just place your piece of
paper over the image that you are tracing.
Using a Grid
Draw up a grid –say, 1cm x 1 cm squares – and lay that grid over a
Prof. C. Gopinath

photograph. Then, on your piece of paper, draw up the same grid

very lightly, and then you can copy each square at a time, and work it
out that way.
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Concept Generation
• Headset for Relaxation. Identification, Ideation, and
Solution
Improves learning ability, memory, creativity
Creates improvements in mental and emotional
health, Improves ability to focus, concentrate and
think more clearly
Lower stress levels
• Where can we use this head set
Relaxation and meditation by entraining brain into
desired states
Focusing attention and enhancing awareness
Preparation for stressful situations
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

Headset concept
Hennes as a designer how he will think and generating ideas on paper
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Concept Generation
It uses advanced technology to read brain frequencies and change
it towards the applied stimulus, without having a side-effect on
users hearing.
Prof. C. Gopinath

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Concept Generation
• Nobel prize-winner Linus Pauling summarized this effective
strategy in a single sentence:
Being prolific, then, is the key to have great ideas. In creativity
matters, there’s no tradeoff between quantity and quality: it is only
through quantity that you get quality.
• We should abandon the myth of the genius that only has great
ideas.
• It seems that every piece of work created by a genius is brilliant,
but that happens because only their greatest creations get any
publicity at all.
• The truth is that they could never have generated such brilliant
Prof. C. Gopinath

creations without being tremendously productive.

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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

Concept design of a accessory for new generation mobile were designed, where
headset was the main theme. Eight concepts were generated.
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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

Headset concept
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Prof. C. Gopinath
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Concept Generation
Prof. C. Gopinath

Styling
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Summary
• Importance of doodle sketches
• Ways of generating the concepts
• Advantages of brainstorming
• Concept evaluation
• This session helps the designer to know how to create
ideas
Prof. C. Gopinath

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