Quality during Design

A quiz:

What statistical concept is used in these design activities?

• DOE (design of experiments)
• Sampling 
• Test results analysis 
• Gage R&R studies 
• Test method validations 
• SPC (with some rules in monitoring changes in a process)

 If you answered, "Hypothesis Testing", you're right on!

Even if you’re not really into statistics, there’s still basics that we should learn and understand, especially in design engineering. 

One of those basics is hypothesis testing. So much of our decisions about whether a design is good or not good (or good enough) is based on this concept. It will fundamentally change how you look at design activities – so much so, it’s a responsibility to understand it.

The podcast blog for this episode includes links to videos to introduce or refresh you on this fundamental topic. 

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

We all like effective and efficient working meetings.

What do we do to plan them, or how do we improve our recurring ones?

Are we prepared to do things differently? If so, we can collect information so we know what we want to improve and by how much.

We talk about best practices of meeting evaluations for those that we plan and facilitate and those recurring team meetings.

What about your meetings now? Do you think WHAT you do (its effectiveness) needs to be improved? Or HOW you do it (its efficiency) could be better? What statement would you first put on your evaluation form?

Visit the podcast blog for a list of prompts for an evaluation form. 

Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

Use Meetings to Add Productivity

Get clarity on goals with a continuum

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

How do we even begin a design for the user without getting into engineering prototypes?

Don't we need to do lots of iterations of prototypes and physical mockups to get design inputs from other people?

While these things can be useful, they're not always practical or necessary, No - we don't need to do lots of iterations of different mockups to get design inputs.

In fact, we want to explore the use space with our team before we even start engineering stuff, including the mockups. So how do we get started talking with our team about a design concept without having something to show them?

This episode describes just one way we could do it: how to get design inputs with flowcharts.

If you want more on this topic, register for the workshop! Registration Link

Workshop title: "Ideation with Flowcharts: Get Easier Buy-In on Engineering Concepts, Faster"

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

How are quality tools Legos of development?

We talk about two philosophies of brick building and our use of the family of quality tools.

We also talk about seven uses of quality tools in product development.

Visit the podcast blog for fun graphics.


Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

Choosing Quality Tools (Mind Map vs. Flowchart vs. Spaghetti Diagram)

Quality as a Strategic Asset vs. Quality as a Control

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

What types of things might happen when we don't fully understand, explore, or address:

• the breadth of the whole concept space,
• a product's many users, and
• the voice of the customer?

We explore a public consumer complaint and upset over coffee pods. And we imagine what may have happened (or didn't happen) during design development that could have helped avoid the issues from the start.

We explore this ongoing, public story to gain some insight and maybe some lessons learned that we can apply to our own designs.

Visit the podcast blog for extra links to videos and other sites. 

Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

Remaking Risk-Based Decisions: Allowing Ourselves to Change our Minds.

Challenges Getting Team Input in Concept Development

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

Dianna Deeney and Shere Tuckey talk about Crucial Conversations® in an engineering environment: how to prepare for and have difficult conversations with peers, managers, and everyone else. 

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 for new product development. 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 Shere

Shere is a Branch Chief in the Air Force Research Laboratory, Munitions Directorate, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. She is responsible for advocating, planning, budgeting, organizing, and directing the execution of a high-priority technology development portfolio as well as direct supervision and management of all personnel within the branch. Over the last twenty-nine years, she has managed twelve different teams across many engineering disciplines from shock physics experimentation to weapon effects modeling and simulation.

Shere has taken a special interest in leadership, mentoring, and helping teams communicate effectively. After being asked to serve as the Dean of Leadership for her organization’s workforce development program, she became certified to teach the Crucial Conversations® course as a foundational element of leadership development.

She has taught five highly rated classes to high level managers, junior employees, and everyone in between. The positive feedback received from these classes and the course’s universal applicability, has motivated Shere to share this knowledge in as many forums as possible.

Shere and Dianna talk about:

• what makes a dialogue a Crucial Conversation®
• how she discovered the Crucial Conversation® framework
• why she trains others at her work in the Crucial Conversations® model and champions its use

Shere also shares stories of success.

Visit the podcast blog for extra show notes and links to Shere's recommended videos.

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

 This is the wrap-up, final episode of our series - the 7th episode in our series about generating ideas with a team toward action. 

Since the start of 2023, we focused on a few quality tools and methods to both generate ideas and then choose which idea to pursue.

We've talked about:

• Changing our scope to a closed world, to failures or questions, or design heuristics
• Brainstorming within a problem-solving framework
• Grouping many ideas and then further refining them
• Prioritizing many ideas by comparing them to 2 criteria or by using team voting
• Choosing an idea by using paired comparisons or a structured decision-making solution like DMRCS
• Giving individuals a process to create a full design concept

We also interviewed an expert in brainstorming and learned the importance of planning for teamwork, including choosing our team.

What have we learned through the last few weeks? Let's highlight take-aways and next steps.

Visit the podcast blog of this episode for extra notes and links!


Previous episodes in our series about generating ideas with our team toward action:

Episode 1: Ways to Gather Ideas with a Team

Episode 2: Product Design with Brainstorming, with Emily Haidemenos (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

Episode 3: After the 'Storm: Group and Explore Ideas

Episode 4: After the 'Storm: Pareto Voting and Screening Methods

Episode 5: After the 'Storm: Compare and Prioritize Ideas

Episode 6: Brainstorming within Design Sprints

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

We're in our 6th episode into our series about generating ideas with our team toward action. The first two episodes were all about idea generation. The 3rd through 5th episodes was about using Quality Tools to help us group, explore, prioritize, and decide on an idea.

This episode is exploring a Design Sprint, a method to develop a design concept with a team in 5 working days. We build upon what we've already covered, plus some big takeaways about brainstorming from the book, "Sprint".

• Give individuals a four-step idea-generating process
• Use iterations of voting to pick stand-out ideas
• Help the team decide what to prototype and test in the last 2 days of the sprint

Visit the podcast blog of this episode for extra information.

Previous episodes in our series about generating ideas with our team toward action:

Episode 1: Ways to Gather Ideas with a Team

Episode 2: Product Design with Brainstorming, with Emily Haidemenos (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

Episode 3: After the 'Storm: Group and Explore Ideas

Episode 4: After the 'Storm: Pareto Voting and Screening Methods

Episode 5: After the 'Storm: Compare and Prioritize Ideas

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

We're in our 5th episode of our series about generating ideas with our team toward action. The first two episodes were all about idea generation. The 3rd was about grouping and exploring ideas. The 4th was about screening ideas. Now, we'll look at ways to compare ideas.

We’re still considering that we're just after brainstorming, at the point where we have many ideas and no next steps. 

Let's compare ideas with our team so we can move toward action. We explore these Quality Tools and how to use them after a brainstorming or other idea-generating team activity: 

• paired comparison
• prioritization matrix
• DMRCS

Visit the podcast blog for extra images, links, and more.

Previous episodes in our series about generating ideas with our team toward action:

Episode 1: Ways to Gather Ideas with a Team

Episode 2: Product Design with Brainstorming, with Emily Haidemenos (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

Episode 3: After the 'Storm: Group and Explore Ideas

Episode 4: After the 'Storm: Pareto Voting and Screening Methods

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

We're in our 4th episode into our series about generating ideas with our team toward action. The first two episodes were all about idea generation. The 3rd was about grouping and exploring ideas.

We’re still considering that we're just after brainstorming, at the point where we have many ideas and no next steps. 

Let's instead screen our ideas so we can move toward action. We explore these Quality Tools and how to use them after a brainstorming or other idea-generating team activity: 

• 2x2 chart
• Systematic list reduction
• Multivoting or Pareto Voting

Visit the podcast blog for extra graphics, links, and recommendations.

Previous episodes in our series about generating ideas with our team toward action:

Episode 1: Ways to Gather Ideas with a Team

Episode 2: Product Design with Brainstorming, with Emily Haidemenos (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

Episode 3: After the 'Storm: Group and Explore Ideas

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.