My Engineering Design Process
My engineering process is centered around a community. You have to be designing for a group of people in mind, otherwise no one will use what you build. An opportunity without a community is a fictional opportunity and its details only exist in a fantasy.
Understanding a community involves talking to multiple stakeholders, understanding their activities, what's difficult about their activities, and the values they hold. Building a solution to an opportuntiy is not enough, it needs to align with the community's beliefs to be accepted.
By talking to a community, an opportunity can be framed. This framing guides what good solutions look like.
As solutions are ideated, non-ideal solutions inform additional framing to help steer others away from such solutions. Aspects of good solutions also inform framing that guides the ideation of more good solutions. This may mean removing constricting design requirements or including new ones.
The process of attempting to select a recommended design involves removing potential designs based on the opportunity framing. By converging, solutions may be combined or adapted. Ideal solution approaches can inform additional diverging with those specific approaches in mind.
Finally, consistently representing ideas from framing, diverging and converging helps communicate with teammates and stakeholders.