Working with the Engineering Team

Design and engineering teams must have a healthy working relationship for a product to be a success (Korman, 2001). Many engineers have come to believe (from unfortunate past experiences) that designers are not entirely trustworthy. Software engineers may even call a design impossible in order to take control when they distrust designers' judgment. Therefore, the design team needs to make an extra effort to speak the language of the development team.

Designers have an obligation to understand the technology platform well enough that engineers can implement what they design. However, designers should concern themselves less with ease of implementation, than with possibility. Decisions based on the ease of implementation should be a management call that occurs only after engineering creates a time and cost estimate based on the design. This also implies that management should not set an implementation deadline until they receive the time and cost estimate from engineering.

During the design process, designers must draw on the domain knowledge of the engineers to understand the technological opportunities and constraints that will affect which behaviors the product can deploy. Designers must also create clear and appropriately detailed form and behavior specifications; a well-reasoned and meticulous design specification quells the fears of engineers because it leaves few interface questions unanswered. Thus, it reduces the likelihood of change requests or missteps that could disrupt engineering schedules.

After the designers hand off the design specifications to engineering, they remain as resources for the engineers. No specification can anticipate every possible behavior and situation, so the designers must support the specification with explanations, elaborations, and extemporaneous decisions on design details as the engineers proceed with the creation of the product. This also acts as a check on the designers, ensuring that they deliver as clear a specification as possible.

In effect, there is a reversal of relationship that happens at the handoff of the design specification: Before the handoff, engineers work in the service of designers, providing technology wisdom. After the handoff, designers work in the service of engineers, providing design wisdom throughout the implementation phase.