I make a lot of mistakes. Fortunately not too many are catastrophic or unsalvageable. Through those mistakes comes the ethos to my approach at solving complex problems. Flexibility and the expectation of pivoting is critical, keeping the passion is a priority, and identifying, solving, and reevaluating technical unknowns is the best way to remove risk.
Even though I’m an electrical engineer by degree, I’ve found that having a diverse skill set is super valuable—for both me and the organizations I’ve worked with. Tackling complex problems often calls for some intuition and sometimes a bit of blind exploration. Is the issue mechanical? Can it be fixed by re-spinning a new board? Maybe a firmware update? Past experience says “yes!”—and it’s probably a mix of all of them. But changing everything at once is rarely the right approach.
Diving deeper into other fields within product development has really boosted cross-functional communication, led to more elegant designs, and sharpened my intuition. It keeps me driven and passionate about designing and solving problems.
I feel very fortunate experiencing how rapid-prototyping today is changing the world of product development — and design more generally. I’m very much a ‘dive in and get started’ kind of person and that attitude may appear risky to some development organizations. Leaning on fast iteration and a willingness to explore has and will often put the development process into the hands of the end-user in an important way.
