engineer engages in a process that is both technical, and social as he or she works to facilitate the creation of a product to meet the customer's needs. If this process were strictly functional application of mathematics, design specifications and materials testing, the bulk of the work could be done by a computer. But the design process is all together human, interwoven by cultural issues, communications issues, and the knowledge that is created as the engineering process travels from conception to completion.

In any design project there generally are different kinds of engineers - mechanical engineers, electronics engineers and so on. They speak different languages; they have different responsibilities, competencies and interests. To reconcile their different claims and proposals, negotiation is required. The book uses the example that refrigerators in the States are huge and in Europe they are small. Clearly there are technical reasons, but the main reason has...
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