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It is not just about what we do...but how we do it... |
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We recognise that it’s not just what we do for our customers - design engineering for example – but also how we go about doing it that is critical to success. We call a big part of this “how”, design management. Others might regard it as part of project management – and it is – but in our experience, for the sort of work we excel at, the transformational nature of design demands special attention. We’ve no magic wand, but we do have one or two “tools” we use, some of our own creation, some based on mainstream design techniques; here’s three: |
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We’ve developed a simple yet very powerful tool to help manage the design process – applicable to any size of design task and type of end product. Whether a single component or complex system, this spreadsheet-based tool facilitates the designer and the whole team get their head around the design, from inception through its evolution to realisation. There’s no fancy software – it’s a methodology not panacea – rather a way of doing things, but it is documented using a spreadsheet in a particular way. At the moment we call it the Cognitive Design Management Matrix, which sounds a bit grand – we’d like to come up with a more zappy name – but this is at least descriptive. We use it, our customers don’t need to – the value is getting the job done, but we’ll gladly teach you about it if you want to use it yourself and you might come up with a suggestion for a more zappy name, which would be great! |
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Talk to any professional engineering design company and they’ll have their own view of how they do what they do – they may or may not be happy to tell you about it, depending on where sensitivities lie. We don’t mind telling you our approach – it kind of defines our scope of work, so here are our nine steps for product development:
Ideas and Planning Design and Proving Prototyping Definition and Specification Approvals Technical and Marketing Documentation Feasibility and Concepts Detailing Information for Production |
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Something we use as a checklist on a lot of projects is our framework for problem solving. It’s a bit like a ladder, taking the top but one rung at a time helps us and our customers climb through the problem space – not a guarantee of reaching the success at we find it helps. Sometimes progress up the ladder is fast – could be several rungs in an meeting or even phone conversation – but normally at least part of the climb is harder going and takes a while; whatever it takes, we focus on getting to the top with our customers.
· Elicitation
· Definition
· Analysis
· Synthesis
· Evaluation
· Selection
· Evolution
· Implementation
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