During my sophomore year of college I took a class in engineering thermodynamics. It was the kind of class that makes young engineers change majors, where the professor told us on the first day that 60% of us would fail the first test (we did).
About that time in my life, I received a card in the mail from a mentor of mine. I'm a big fan of Quotable Cards (I'm a big fan of good quotes), and this particular card is still sitting on my nightstand.
Part of becoming an engineer is learning to make good assumptions. But part of being a great engineer is learning to question those assumptions.
It's this part that's lost in lots of designers.
In order to start the design process, you have to make assumptions. To solve a complex system, you have to engineer with information you don't have yet. The design process dictates that you generate design inputs - that is, physical specifications, dimensions, materials... what the product will look like - before you can even create a prototype. And professional engineers do a great job of checking to see that their product meets those design inputs. That's design validation.
But what about verification? What about verifying that my product does not what I wanted it to do, but what my doctor wanted it to do? what my patient wanted it to do? That's design verification. And that's where it becomes important to question your assumptions.
In the past two years I've learned a lot about myself as a designer. I've brought three products to market, taken a course in SolidWorks, and spent significant time in the hospital with clinicians and patients. I've been to a manufacturing plant in Mexico and created a new process for adhesive coating in New Hampshire. I've found that in my career what I'm best at is asking questions, and questioning assumptions. I spend my time in the top half of that graph - on asking why we're doing what we're doing, and how a product behaves with a patient.
I think we can all benefit from questioning our assumptions. Making an assumption is answering the question of how to do something. Questioning assumptions is about asking why we're doing it in the first place. It's about being mindful of decisions, of interactions, of relationships. So go ahead and jump into a problem headfirst. Make some assumptions. Move forward. And then come back and ask yourself why. Look at the assumptions you made, and question whether or not they were the correct ones. Give someone else a chance to surprise you. Give yourself a chance to surprise you.
In the past two years I've learned a lot about myself as a designer. I've brought three products to market, taken a course in SolidWorks, and spent significant time in the hospital with clinicians and patients. I've been to a manufacturing plant in Mexico and created a new process for adhesive coating in New Hampshire. I've found that in my career what I'm best at is asking questions, and questioning assumptions. I spend my time in the top half of that graph - on asking why we're doing what we're doing, and how a product behaves with a patient.
I think we can all benefit from questioning our assumptions. Making an assumption is answering the question of how to do something. Questioning assumptions is about asking why we're doing it in the first place. It's about being mindful of decisions, of interactions, of relationships. So go ahead and jump into a problem headfirst. Make some assumptions. Move forward. And then come back and ask yourself why. Look at the assumptions you made, and question whether or not they were the correct ones. Give someone else a chance to surprise you. Give yourself a chance to surprise you.
2 people have something to say:
That class was such a pain in the butt. I miss being an engineer sometimes.
@ Elli, Amen. That class was a royal pain in the butt.
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