The Engineering Approach to the Design Development

Viktor Zhytomyrskyi

February 17, 2022

Modern product design is full of limitations and controversies that often restrict a designer’s creative process. For quite some time now, the “this is how I see it” approach doesn’t work anymore, when developing a design for a specific target audience. In this article, I want to share my thoughts and observations on the systemic approach to organising the working process, when undertaking any kind of endeavour or implementing a new function.

So, what is the main point of the article? When looking for a solution to a creative challenge, think about the ideal result. For instance, in TIPS, there is a method called Perfect Final Result, which calls for the creation of the perfect solution to a problem — the one where the system itself might not exist but its function is performed. Or, even better, to create conditions that eliminate the need for the function entirely.

Here is an excerpt from the book “Think like an engineer. How to transform problems into solutions”

“… computer engineers use the concept called “denormalization”, the core idea of which is to think about limitations backwards. “It is as if you start with the ideal world”, explains Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, a software development and consulting company, “You design the system as if no limitations exist. Then, step after step, you introduce them and compromise.”

At the same time, to achieve truly impressive results, it is necessary to follow several important requirements. First of all, a creative task must be clearly defined. This helps a brain combine different concepts better in search of a solution.

“The more detailed the description of a creative challenge is, the easier it will be to resolve it… A creative challenge is a picture on a puzzle box — without it, putting the puzzle together is hard.”

Excerpt from the book “Agile mind” by Estanislao Bachrach

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The second important aspect is the number of ideas to come up with when looking for a solution. As with any brainstorming — the more ideas the better. Turn off your inner critic and work on the number of possible solutions to a given challenge. Then, choose the best one.

… “generate ideas without analysing whether they are good, realistic, or even on point. Allow yourself to think without censorship. My advice is to set a target time and a number of ideas. This would help you focus your creative energy on the task before you.”

Excerpt from the book “Agile mind” by Estanislao Bachrach.

I would like to emphasise the 4 benefits of our approach

High quality of development: It is advisable to describe to the developers your idea and all of its integral details while you are still in the ideation phase. It is useful as it allows one to understand better what technical challenges and stumbling blocks await you on your way to developing a new feature. In other words, is there a perfect solution within your reach or are there restrictions that you will have to reckon with? This might save you time that you otherwise would have spent on futile ideas.
MVP development optimization: In modern design, it is customary to test hypotheses via MVP (Minimum Viable Product). It allows one to check the value of an idea by developing a smaller version of a larger feature and see how much customers really need it. The approach is phenomenal — it helps test the idea without spending a lot of time and resources. Nonetheless, being able to view an idea from the standpoint of the ideal implementation of a solution to user needs, can inspire new, more profound and atypical choices on how to resolve the issue.
The best decision, instead of a good one: Rather often, during brainstorming (individual or group), we compromise, opting for the first good choice that satisfies almost all of our criteria. This stops us from discovering a better solution. The search for the perfect solution, albeit unrealisable at the first glance, enables you to explore the hidden potential and reach a new level of quality.
The quality of planning: The reflections from the previous point might not lead to a perfect solution to the problem, but it would certainly provide an opportunity to plan iterations of the feature implementation in more detail — from MVP to full-scale realisation if testing shows positive results. It would be done with Product Evolution Canvas — an instrument for planning product or feature releases from MVP to a full-scale release. It looks like this:
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Canvas comprises three parts (or waves): MVP, Core Product and Full-Scale Product. Considering the described idea, it is better to begin ideation from the third wave — Full-Scale Product. When the perfect version of the product/feature is devised, one can start looking for compromises and consider the development of simpler versions that require fewer resources to be implemented.

In general, the approach is not new and has been used for quite a while now. Here are several inspiring examples of how it helps create new impressive solutions:

Here is another excerpt from the book “Think like an engineer”

John Shepherd-Barron was an old-fashioned Scot with an inquisitive mind. The story goes that one day in the mid-1960s, he was several minutes late for a bank that was closing for the weekend. Shepherd-Barron desperately needed cash. He begged the manager to open but the manager refused.⁠Being an engineer to his core, Shepherd-Barron decided to develop a way to withdraw cash from an account anytime, anywhere. He was working as a managing director of a banknote printing company, first being responsible for the direction of printing, and then — for the transportation of funds in armoured vehicles. His next step was to explore ways to issue currency automatically. And he completed the cycle by inventing the ATM. How did he do it? “I thought of a vending machine that would dispense money instead of sweats.” — explained Shepherd-Barron.⁠For engineers, like Shepherd-Barron, the notion of reverse engineering is particularly useful, meaning the ability to imagine the perfect result beforehand and design with it in mind. Then the moments of enlightenment are the result of mindful, methodical planning that underlies the combination of ideas, experience and opportunities.

And here is my favourite and the most inspiring, in my opinion, example, in which resolving an artistic issue ascends a new height by incorporating an engineering approach to the development of a new feature. In this example, by considering all characteristics and contradictions of a perfect decision, developers could not only incorporate a feature into unfavourable conditions but utilise the source of the main issue in a way that helps the feature function better.

This is an excerpt from the book “The Best Interface is No Interface,” by Golden Krishna, in which the author describes an example of a solution to the problem of car overheating in hot parking lots. There have been some rather good attempts from other automakers to resolve the issue, but all of them (as we described in the 3rd point of benefits) settled on just a good solution instead of the best one. For instance, Nissan offered to start the process of cooling a car manually, via a mobile application. Here is how the author envisages the process, if, for example, a person has left a car in a parking lot to go to a cinema:

Leave the car in the parking lot and go to the cinema
Decide to get back in the car
15 minutes before returning to the car, think that it has probably heated up
Pull out your smartphone
Activate your smartphone
Click on the button to log in
Exit the app you last opened
Scroll through the icon page to find the app you want
Point your finger at the icon
Wait for the application to start and find the button that starts the cooling system
Look through the menu and try pressing Climate
Click the Turn Climate Control On button
Wait 15 minutes
Sit in a cooled car

And here is how the same problem was resolved for Mazda 929 — out of all the mentioned steps users needed to do just the first and the last ones:

“The car heats up when it is hot outside. Mazda installed a simple and well-known tool for determining temperature — a thermometer. When the temperature reaches a certain point,⁠the sensor sends a signal, letting the system know that the car is heating up.⁠Upon receiving the signal, small ventilators start cooling the car. Since the sensor communicates that it is hot outside, we can assume that the car is located under the rays of the sun. Therefore, Mazda installed solar batteries on top of the car. And they power the ventilation system. When you return to your Mazda 929, it is nice to know that the cool air around you did not require a single drop of petrol, as what is equally important — a single inch of the interface. By taking context into account, the developers of 929 have used the source of a problem — the sun, as the problem’s solution.⁠Smart.⁠When the temperature sensor determines that the interior is sufficiently cooled, the solar battery starts to recharge the car battery.⁠ Even smarter. ”⁠An excerpt from the book “The Best Interface is No Interface,” by Golden Krishna

Conclusion alternative

Let’s summarise all of the above. In order to find a new approach to solving a creative problem, one needs to:

Clearly define the goal (the task)
Turn off inner censorship
Find as many potential ways to resolve an issue as possible

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