These books emphasize case studies and design for ease of use, not design details. The Proceedings listed last provide a good source of design theory papers and references.
Henry Petroski, To Engineer is Human, "The Role of Failure in Successful Design," 1988, First Vintage Books (paperback) Edition, 1988.
Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Doubleday, New York, 1988. Explains the importance of usable design. Emphasizes the human factors aspects of design. Many examples of unnatural user interfaces.
Michael L. Dertouzos, Richard K. Lester and Robert M. Solow, Made in America, MIT Press, 1989. Now published in paperback by Harper Perennial, this is a survey and analysis of manufacturing procedures and US competitiveness.
James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos, The Machine That Changed the World, Rawson Associates, New York, 1990. Now published in paperback by Harper Perennial, this is the best seller describing the MIT study of US, Japanese and European automobile manufacturing, defining lean production.
Charles W. Hoover and J.B. Jones, Co-chairs, Improving Engineering Design: Designing for Competitive Advantage, National Research Council, 1991. A survey of current design practice, and recommendations for improved design procedures.
James L. Adams, Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-Rings: The World of An Engineer, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1991. This book gives an overview of what engineers do, and illustrates the connection between design and other engineering work. It emphasizes creativity in engineering.
Donald A. Norman, Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles, Addison- Wesley, Reading, 1992. Nice essays on design.
Jeffrey A. Drezner, et al., "Maintaining Future Military Aircraft Design Capability," Rand Report R-4199-AF, 1992. This is a discussion of the operation of design teams in major airframers, and the problem of maintaining design teams as defense spending decreases.
Eugene S. Ferguson, Engineering and the Mind's Eye, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1992. This is an interesting book on the design process and the role of graphics. The author also has a lot to say about engineering education in the US.
Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1992.
Donald A. Norman, Things That Make Us SMART, "Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine," Addison-Wesley, Reading, 1993. A more serious approach to much of the material described in "Turn Signals" cited above.
Henry Petroski, Design Paradigms, "Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering," Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994. More case studies from a civil engineer.
Edward Lumsdaine and Monika Lumsdaine, Creative Problem Solving, Thinking Skills for a Changing World, McGraw-Hill, Inc, New York, 1995. This book is a good compilation of current approaches encouraging creativity, and includes brief descriptions of the role and details of many of the quality methods (QFD, TQM, Taguchi, etc.).
-, "Proceedings of the 5th AIAA/NASA/USAF/ISSMO Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design," Panama City Beach , Sept. 7-9, 1994. Published by the AIAA, Washington, DC.
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direct comments and suggestions to W.H. Mason, mason@aoe.vt.edu