If you're taking a course about engineering design and your professor selected this book he/she made a good decision. I first it looks a bit intimidating because of its size and weight; don't be. This book explain everything in a simple and uncomplicated manner all the concepts you need to learn. You don't have be a NASA engineers in order for you to understand what they are saying. I started reading my assignment, basically read through chapter 1,and I got so sucked into it that I end up reading up to half of chapter 3. Overall it's a nice book to learn how engineers work up to a final design.