Book excerpt: If you have designs for wonderful machines in mind, but aren’t sure how to turn your ideas into real, engineered products that can be manufactured, marketed, and used, this book is for you. Engineering professor and veteran maker Tom Ask helps you integrate mechanical engineering concepts into your creative design process by presenting them in a rigorous but largely nonmathematical format. Through mind stories and images, this book provides you with a firm grounding in material mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer. Students, product and mechanical designers, and inventive makers will also explore nontechnical topics such as aesthetics, ethnography, and branding that influence product appeal and user preference. Learn the importance of designing functional products that also appeal to users in subtle ways Explore the role of aesthetics, ethnography, brand management, and material culture in product design Dive into traditional mechanical engineering disciplines related to the behavior of solids, liquids, and gases Understand the human factors of design, such as ergonomics, kinesiology, anthropometry, and biomimicry Get an overview of available mechanical systems and components for creating your product