Engineers vs. Designers

In our laboratory, we work a lot with various designers. In the world of robotics - every little designer. But a great experience has already been accumulated with real professionals. Perhaps we should share it with our readers.

First of all, remember, design never succeeds the first time. As in life - love at first sight happens, yes, but it’s better to live together first. A good result is always a method of engineering-physical poking, trial and error. Do not think that if you hire the most expensive designer, he will bring the first time a better job than a young, hungry and cheap.

You can ride in first gear all the way. Really possible. But in Shenzhen they work in a different way - they quickly gas up a hundred and on. Samples and errors are acceptable when the results are very quickly adjusted. The pace of the team of designers and engineers must match. If some work like mad, and the second meditate and smoke bamboo, then there may be both geniuses. But together they will not succeed.

Details, details, details - the expert differs from the layman only in his attention to details. Little things determine success, and changes in little things determine whether we notice success itself.

The concept of time is different for all nations. But we are all Russian people, engineers, designers. why do we all understand the deadline differently. If they said “it is necessary by the evening”, then it is necessary to do “by this evening”, and not the next. Well, say, “I won’t do it in the evening, but it will be in the morning.” Why settle for what cannot be done. This understanding of the time frame should be the same.

Money. This is the most difficult and unpleasant. Few people understand that if they agreed on one amount, then with the same amount of work, changing it in the process of work itself, well, to put it mildly, is incorrect. it seems obvious. But over and over again I hear "we did not think that you would demand such a high quality of work from us."

“Are you really an industrial designer?” - I just want to post this meme. The ability to draw a beautiful render is one thing, and creating the design of a product is completely different. Demand to introduce you to industrial designers and do not hesitate to interview them about their past experience.

There are no competencies in working with electronics in domestic designers. we don’t think Arduino is electronics, right?

Customers want it - beautiful. This is always true. Yes, they like to recall Tupolev’s quote. But ergonomics and practicality, serviceability of the product are no less important. Designers should gently remind the customer about this, and not sacrifice them secretly.

Industrial designers are hired because they have more experience in creating industrial products. But when industrial designers do not think at all about how this will be produced then, then we think about the competencies of these industrial designers.

It would be unfair if, having collected “lessons to be learnt” on working with industrial designers, we did not ask the designers themselves what they learned by working with us. Here's what happened:

“It is important to strictly adhere to deadlines, while discussing possible solutions to ensure deadlines. It is important to quickly eliminate all the nuances and hidden flaws, even if there is only one night for this, and the device is in another city. Any transferred product - should be exclusively final, no intermediates. In the beginning, it is important to go through as much detail as possible all the controversial issues of the ToR and resolve technical contradictions without delay, including making experiments with hardware, even if there is a purely outline design ”.

Pay attention to the amazing correlation of our opinion and designers.

Good luck in your work!