Exploring the Problem Space: A Key Principle for Robust Product Design and Project Success

Ever wonder why many product designs fail or why projects don’t always come out as planned? The answer might lie in how we approach the ‘problem space’ versus the ‘solution space’.

We’re celebrating two and a half years of Quality During Design podcast by revisiting the fundamental principles that guide our product design processes, and exploring how we can apply these principles to avoid common pitfalls.

We talk about the importance of staying longer in the problem space, using quality tools for teamwork, and understanding the power of pre-work in meetings.  Listen-in to challenge our thinking and push us to rethink how we engage with new projects. Plus, gain insights on how questioning, investigating, and experimental approaches during project planning will empower you to refine your design processes.

We’re inviting you to consider how the Quality During Design methodology can streamline your design process, reduce product failures, and create more meaningful customer experiences. This isn’t just about designing products; it’s about redefining how we perceive and approach the entire design process.

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Exploring Product Development and AI Through Literature:

Insights from ‘Loonshots’, ‘AI 2041’, ‘Quit’, and “How Big Things Get Done’ (QDD Book Cast)

Ever wondered how the world of product development can be viewed through the lens of a physicist? How the future of AI will impact our existence? What a champion poker player has to say about quitting, and what we can learn about product development from an architect?

This week, we dive headfirst into those questions with four fascinating reads: ‘Loonshots’ by Safi Bahcall,  ‘AI 2041’ by Kai Fu Lee and Chen Quifan, ‘Quit’ by Annie Duke, and ‘How Big Things Get Done’ by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner.

These books have reshaped my perspective and I believe they hold interesting insights for you too. We’ll explore how these books apply to new product development projects and how they can help us do it better. I also share why I thought some were better together, read in pairs.

For those of you who love a good discussion, I’m inviting you to join my virtual book club where we can further unravel these intriguing books. Let me know if you’re interested!

So, tune in for a conversation that promises to be as enlightening as it is engaging!

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Design for User Tasks using an Urgent/Important Matrix

We’ve collected all sorts of preliminary information about our users that we’re using for a new product design. We may be faced with so much data we’re not sure where to turn first, or what design feature is a priority. There’s a simple, 2-way matrix we can use to help us sort it all out: an urgent/important matrix. We may have used it to prioritize tasks for ourselves or as a management strategy for our team. But, we can also use it to evaluate the tasks our users take when using our product.

We talk more about this matrix in the podcast, and we talk through an example of how to use it to evaluate user tasks.

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Information Development in Design, with Scott Abel – Part 2 (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

Dianna Deeney interviews Scott Abel about why members of the technical documentation team should be brought into product design process earlier rather than later. And to encourage product design teams to incorporate the insights available from technical documentation professionals into their design decisions.

This episode is Part 2 of our interview. Part 1 (published earlier) was a discussion involving information development management. This Part 2 focuses on technical communication in design.

This interview is part of our series, “A Chat with Cross Functional Experts”. Our focus is speaking with people that are typically part of a cross-functional team within engineering projects. We discuss their viewpoints and perspectives regarding new products, the values they bring to new product development, and how they’re involved and work with product design engineering teammates.

About Scott

Scott Abel serves as Content Strategy Evangelist at Heretto. He also runs a consultancy called The Content Wrangler, which helps companies improve how they author, maintain, manage, and deliver technical product information to those who need it, when, where, and how they prefer it. He writes regularly for content industry publications, produces a series of content strategy-focused books for XML Press, and is a dynamic presenter often featured at content industry events worldwide.

Scott and Dianna talk about:

• Today’s approaches of information developers and how they work in project teams.
• Today’s challenges with content and why it’s not just an instruction manual. We talk about limits to the ability to scale, deliverability, personalization, and relationships with customer service call centers.
• Regulations, standards, and awards within the information developer’s world.
• How to approach, engage, and incorporate technical communication people and information developers into an engineering project.

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Information Development in Design, with Scott Abel – Part 1 (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

Dianna Deeney interviews Scott Abel about information development management, a discipline concerned with best practices for managing and coordinating all activities related to the development, production, and distribution of information. He shares ideas, strategies, and best practices for unifying all product information – technical documentation, product specifications, customer support, training, and on-boarding – in a single online knowledge center.

This is Part 1 of 2 episodes with Scott. In Part 1 (this episode) we talk about information development management. In Part 2 (next episode), we talk about technical communication as part of product design success.

This interview is part of our series, “A Chat with Cross Functional Experts”. Our focus is speaking with people that are typically part of a cross-functional team within engineering projects. We discuss their viewpoints and perspectives regarding new products, the values they bring to new product development, and how they’re involved and work with product design engineering teammates.

About Scott

Scott Abel serves as Content Strategy Evangelist at Heretto. He also runs a consultancy called The Content Wrangler, which helps companies improve how they author, maintain, manage, and deliver technical product information to those who need it, when, where, and how they prefer it. He writes regularly for content industry publications, produces a series of content strategy-focused books for XML Press, and is a dynamic presenter often featured at content industry events worldwide.

In Part 1, Scott and Dianna talk about:

• Why technical documentation is more important than it’s generally treated: it relates to the success of existing customers, the loyalty of customers to a brand, attracts new customers, and provides confidence to perspective customers.
• How technical documentation affects regulated products, and why “future fear of noncompliance” is a trap that leads to a loss of information management advancements and their benefits.
• What object-oriented technical communication management is and COPE (create once, publish everywhere).

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Crafting Effective Technical Documents for the Engineering Field

Ready to hone your technical writing skills as an engineer? This episode of the Quality During Design podcast is a must-listen! We delve into the critical role of technical communication in engineering, and why written communication skills are non-negotiable for engineers. Join me, Dianna Deeney, as we consider different perspectives to make your technical writing the best it can be.

Our chat takes us on a journey through the past, present, and future of technical writing, as we root ourselves in the realities of presenting findings, interpreting data, and making actionable decisions. In the spirit of past, present, and future, we discuss techniques to ensure that your writing is effective and reaches your audience – be it your project team, auditors, or a future engineer referencing your work. Grab your pen and paper or open your word document as we together make strides in improving our technical communication skills.

This Quality during Design Redux episode was originally “The Spirits of Technical Writing Past, Present, and Future”. Visit the podcast blog, here.

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How to use FMEA for Complaint Investigation

FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) is a tool we can use to help us investigate complaints from the field. The FMEA is a matrix of the collective team knowledge about the risks of this product, so it’s a valuable source in our investigation about what’s going on in the field.

We talk through how to go about using FMEA for complaint investigation and what we can do with the information.

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Results-Driven Decisions, Faster: Accelerated Stress Testing as a Reliability Life Test

We want to ensure our designs perform reliably, as expected and intended. With today’s high-reliability products and quick release to market, we probably don’t have enough time to just test our parts at normal use rates. It would take too long, because our products ARE so reliable. Or, we’ll miss our window of opportunity to get our product to market.

There are several ways to get reliability data to make design decisions. One of the ways is reliability life testing of our product.

This episode explores how accelerated stress testing is one subset of other reliability life testing methods, when it’s a good idea, how we can approach doing it, and what we can do with the results.

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Journey from Production to Consumption: Enhancing Product Reliability

When you design a product, you consider the field reliability. Use environment usually comes to mind first. Do you also consider the stresses it undergoes from its creation to the end user’s hands?

We talk about designing for reliability, accounting for not just the product’s use but also its journey from production to the consumer. As a part of our in-depth discussion, we’ll look into the role of various environments – field and production – in affecting a product’s reliability.

By the end of this episode, you’ll see field reliability as including the various stresses acting on a product from its inception. So, buckle up as we embark on this journey to rethink reliability during design.

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QDD Redux: Choose Reliability Goals for Modules

We have a reliability target for our system. But we’re not meeting it.

To avoid this scenario, what is something we can do in early development?

When we’re figuring out our concept, we can better learn about our options. We can work with Reliability Engineers to understand what we know, the risk in what we don’t know, and to prioritize reliability of the modules to be able to meet the reliability of our whole system.

We talk about using reliability allocation to help us choose reliability goals for modules of our product design. And we talk about its limitations.

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Reliability Engineering during Design, with Adam Bahret (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

Dianna Deeney interviews Adam Bahret about reliability engineering during design: how product design engineers and product development leadership can incorporate reliability engineering.

This interview is part of our series, “A Chat with Cross Functional Experts”. Our focus is speaking with people that are typically part of a cross-functional team within engineering projects. We discuss their viewpoints and perspectives regarding new products, the values they bring to new product development, and how they’re involved and work with product design engineering teammates. [Read more…]

QDD Redux: 5 Options to Manage Risks during Product Engineering

Part of Quality during Design is using reliability engineering as part of the design process.

We’re warming up to the topic this week with a QDD Redux episode – pulling an episode from our archive from last year that’s a good overview of some things we’ll be getting more into.

Next week, I’m interviewing a Reliability Engineer as part of the series A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts.  You won’t want to miss it!

So, let’s stretch and warm-up to Reliability during Design! 

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The Instant Glory of Projects

We do projects all the time. Some projects are about developing new things, and others are about improving what we have – continuous improvement.

In the quality realm, there’s what they call the instant glory model. This same kind of thing can happen in product design, too.

We talk about what quality folks call an instant glory, and what to do about it in product design engineering.

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What to do about Virtual Meetings

Virtual meetings are here to stay.

What does this mean when product design engineers are trying to get design inputs from the cross-functional team?

It means we need to adapt and to show that we’re consistent and that we can be trusted to facilitate the meeting within time and with goals achieved.

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QDD Redux: How to self-advocate for more customer face time (and why it’s important)

We’ve been talking about how to best work with our cross-functional team at early concept development – to use quality and reliability tools in working meetings to really understand the concept space as a way to design for how the customer may experience our new concept idea.

Coming out of our talks make be questions about unknowns or misalignments. We may need to meet our customers where they’re at to get clarity.

When engineers say, “I’d like to talk with a customer about this,” we usually get push-back.

We need to tackle objections and remove obstacles between design engineers and their customers. For ideas, I’ve pulled an episode from the archive, originally published December 2021.

Listen-in to learn how we can take next steps in the concept space when visiting customers.

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