Quality during Design
Quality during Design is the podcast for engineers and product developers navigating the messy front end of product development. Each episode gives you practical quality and reliability tools you can use during the design phase — so your team catches problems early, avoids costly rework, and ships products people can depend on.You'll hear solo episodes on early-stage clarity, risk-based decision-making, and quality thinking, along with conversations with cross-functional experts in the series A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts.If you want to design products people love for less time, less cost, and a whole lot fewer headaches — this is your place.Host...
The Knowledge Your Team Has That Nobody's Using
Late-breaking insights in product development aren’t caused by negligence but by a lack of structure that pulls existing team knowledge into concept discussions early, when changes are cheaper.
Dianna describes an experiment running three product briefs (solar post-installation support, a portable oxygen concentrator, and a field lettuce harvester module) through traditional versus structured concept development.
Both produced credible outputs, but the structured method added context: linking each design input to a specific use-process failure or targeted benefit, its severity or importance, and a clear acceptance condition. Engineering inherits clarity rather than having to guess inte...
Beyond the Pipeline: Rethinking Engineering Careers with Cassie Leonard (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
The episode features Cassie Leonard—former aerospace technical leader, executive coach, and author of STEM Moms and Beyond the Pipeline—explaining why the traditional linear “pipeline” model of engineering careers is constricting and mislabels non-linear moves as failure.
Drawing on expectancy-value theory, she presents an ROI-style equation for decisions: attainment, intrinsic, and utility value divided by effort, loss of valued alternatives, and cost of failure, illustrating it with her choice to leave a Fortune 100 role and start her coaching business.
This conversation applies the framework to individual confidence and authenticity, leader strategies for retention and recognitio...
The Quiet System: Why Your Lessons Learned Aren’t Sticking
Your team keeps solving the exact same problems project after project. What if the issue isn't careless execution, but a reactive system designed to hide failures rather than learn from them?
In this episode:
• Discover how protective, reactive systems create "quiet" organizations where vital failure data gets buried instead of shared.
• Learn the three essential shifts high-performing organizations use to turn lessons learned into strategic, upstream inputs.
• Understand why the pendulum swing toward over-constrained, paperwork-heavy processes is just another system design failure.
Ready to stop the cycle of repeating mistakes? Download the strateg...
Shannon Cummings on Why Marketing Should Be in the Room Before the First Prototype (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
Your team keeps building the wrong thing, despite great effort. What if the problem isn’t execution. It’s the fog you’re navigating in?
We speak with Shannon Cummings, a seasoned product and marketing strategist who’s spent his career bridging the gap between Marketing, Product, and Engineering. He’s launched life-changing medical devices, cut development time in half, and done it all by bringing marketing into the room before the first prototype.
In this episode:
• Why product development fails when marketing is an afterthought
• How early customer insight—not pro...
Stop Being a Witness to Decisions That You Should be Helping to Shape
Have you ever walked into a meeting (design review, planning session, phase gate) only to realize the decision was already made? That the discussion was just theater, not dialogue? You weren’t there to shape the outcome. You were there to witness it. If that’s happened to you, you’re not alone.
In this episode, Dianna explores why this happens, why it feels so frustrating, and most importantly how to fix it.
In this episode:
• Design reviews are often theater because of the system: decisions are made before the meeting, not during
• Real influen...
Karli Auble THRIVEs: Positive Psychology Meets Engineering Rigor (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
In this episode of 'Quality during Design', we delve into how engineers can avoid mistakes and oversights by managing stress and enhancing performance.
Host Dianna Deeney interviews Karli Auble, an engineering leader at a global firm in the defense industry. She has unique expertise in systems engineering and positive psychology, with a master's degree in both disciplines.
Karli shares insights on her THRIVE framework, focusing on thoughts, habits, relationships, instincts, values, and environments. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing 'error codes' in our bodies, applying practical tools, and fostering better communication within teams. All with a...
Constraints Unlock Creativity: Why Frameworks Beat Blank Slates in Product Concept Design
Your team keeps brainstorming into a void, producing “meh” ideas that never stick. What if the problem isn’t a lack of creativity but the absence of the right constraints?
In this episode:
• The Goldilocks principle of team creativity – why no guardrails and too‑many guardrails both kill innovation.
• Frameworks unlock, don’t limit, creativity – using the drummers‑without‑drums analogy to show how structured constraints spark breakthrough ideas.
• Timing and the Concept Space Model – the sweet spot after business approval but before detailed design, and how to map inputs, process...
Cut Through The Design Fog
Early concept development often fails because teams lack clarity and alignment, leading to wasted time and resources. Discover the structured approach needed to cut through the "design fog" and ensure your team is building the right product from the start.
In this episode:
• The Concept Space Model defines the fundamental questions teams must align on before diving into technical details.
• The ADEPT Team Framework provides a five-part method for effective co-creation and structured ideation.
• Learn how brainwriting and ensuring common understanding lead to actionable design inputs.
Do you...
The Design Fog is Derailing Your Project
Your team spent six weeks on a feature that got rejected in the demo. Your engineers built a prototype that totally missed the mark. This misalignment is the design fog, and it’s where most product failures are born in the uncomfortable space of the fuzzy front end.
In this episode:
• Learn why jumping to prototypes introduces fixedness, robbing your team of the chance to define true user requirements.
• Understand the symptoms of the design fog, including the silent assumptions problem and the premature precision trap.
• Discover how the Concept...
Expected Value Makes Uncertainty Manageable
Ever face a late-stage design decision where your gut says “maybe,” finance says “no,” and the schedule says “hurry”?
We unpack a simple way to make those calls with more clarity: using expected value to connect confidence, upside, and downside into one sober view of net benefit. No jargon, no spreadsheets required—just a clear framework that helps you see when a $50,000 test buys real certainty, and when the right move is to ship.
Still, numbers don’t get the final say. The goal isn’t to pick the biggest EV; it’s to choose the most balanced, ac...
Define Kill Criteria to Avoid Zombie Projects
When pursuing aggressive benchmarks, engineers must employ portfolio thinking, running multiple design projects simultaneously. But choosing winners requires a decisive way to eliminate projects that are not feasible to continue innovating, often referred to as a "project killer".
In this episode, we analyze Tesla's battery development as a case study. We delve into their use of five clear-cut constraint categories that define failure conditions upfront: the Economic filter, Performance filter, Scalability filter, Resource filter, and System filter.
We discuss the challenges engineers face in letting go of projects due to the sunk co...
Confidence is a Dial: Turn It with Evidence, Not Guesswork
We turn late-stage design surprises into a strategic plan by assigning explicit confidence levels, stacking evidence, and using the three-dial model of time, cost, and confidence boost. We show how to work backward from a system test to cheaper steps that drive faster, clearer decisions.
• applying the three dials of time, cost, confidence
• sequencing with the work-backwards strategy
• avoiding overtesting, undertesting, wrong testing
• turning confidence into a team communication tool
• practical next steps to build the confidence muscle
Subscribe to the Substack for monthly guides, templates, and Q&A where I help you a...
Raise Your Confidence by Strategically Stacking Evidence
Late-stage design just hit a snag—now comes the moment that separates guesswork from great engineering. We walk through a clear, repeatable method to investigate unexpected failures and make high-impact decisions with confidence. Instead of hunting for a perfect test, we set a confidence target and stack multiple forms of imperfect evidence until we close the gap.
If you’re navigating late-stage product development and want a calm, methodical way to move from 40% to 90% confidence, this framework will help you choose the next best step, allocate limited time and budget, and know when to stop.
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Stop Risk Theater, Start Real Decisions
We break down why risk analyses often become checkbox theater and replace them with a simple, practical impact vs likelihood matrix that guides action. From quick wins to high-stakes unknowns, we show how to calibrate effort, buy the right learning, and move with confidence.
Join the Substack for monthly guides, templates, and QA where I help you apply these to your specific projects.
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If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar
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How to Choose Risk Tools That Actually Help Decisions
If you reach for the nearest “risk” template, it might cause more problems.
There are two very different jobs we ask risk tools to do. In this episode, we talk about how to pick the one that actually moves your project forward.
identification tools for unknown unknowns (like FMEA and preliminary hazard analysis) that systematically surface risks to users, systems, and environmentsdecision tools for known unknowns that clarify impact, likelihood, and uncertainty so teams can choose a path with confidence.Along the way, we call out organizational risks—supplier failure, regulation shifts, competitor timing—that belong in...
Design clarity through cadence: aligning podcasts, Substack, and a playbook for teams
Big changes, clearer focus, and more ways to learn together. We’re tightening our cadence to two episodes a month and building monthly themes that travel across the podcast, blog, and a new Substack home—so you can go beyond ideas and into practice with tools, Q&A, and live community sessions.
Here’s what’s new and why it matters. The podcast keeps its familiar format, but now each month has a focused theme that carries into Substack deep dives. Subscribers get comprehensive guides, open Q&A weeks where we answer your specific questions in the comments...
QDD Redux: Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction in Product Design (the Kano Model)
How do you balance customer wants with project constraints? If your customer-facing teammates are saying our customers want this, that and the other thing, which ones do we prioritize over others?
Not all features are equal in the eyes of our customers. And not all features are value-added, either.
In this episode, we delve into how to prioritize customer wants using the powerful Kano Model, a tool that maps customer satisfaction against the implementation of product features.
You'll learn how to differentiate between essential and non-essential features, ensuring that your design truly resonates...
Beyond Requirements: How Quality Methods Provide Actionable Design Inputs
Every product designer knows that critical moment when you must shift from understanding customer needs to actually engineering solutions. It's where the magic happens—and where many projects stumble.
After a week of concept development with your team (customer evaluations, benefit analysis, symptom ID, and process mapping), you've gathered valuable insights. But how do you transform this mountain of information into concrete technical requirements?
Quality tools transform the concept-to-design transition from a jarring handoff to a smooth, continuous conversation with your cross-functional team. In translating concept development ideas into design inputs, you'll create products that tru...
Map the User Journey: Design for Seamless Experiences
This episode explores the critical importance of evaluating the customer's use process during concept development.
Rather than focusing solely on what your product does, understanding how users will interact with it creates opportunities to design more intuitive, enjoyable experiences. By mapping out the steps users take from beginning to end using process flowcharts, development teams gain clarity on inputs, outputs, and the journey between them.
Quality engineers have long used flowchart analysis tools to improve manufacturing processes, and these same techniques provide tremendous value in product design.
Whether you need to simplify complex st...
Keven Wang’s 4-Step Journey to AI-Powered Quality Control (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
What happens when cutting-edge AI meets manufacturing quality control? The results are nothing short of revolutionary.
Keven Wang, co-founder and CEO of UnitX, takes us through the world of AI-powered visual inspection, where it is transforming how factories detect defects and improve product quality. Drawing from his experience with over 160 manufacturers worldwide, Keven reveals how these systems consistently outperform both human inspectors and traditional rule-based vision systems, reducing escape rates by up to 10x while cutting scrap rates by approximately 50%.
We talk beyond basic implementation to explore Kevin's four-step roadmap for AI-powered manufacturing. Starting with...
Design to Avoid Problems: Focusing on Symptoms Early On
Ever stood in that devastating moment when customers finally interact with your nearly-finished product only to hear them say, "I don't like that" or "This doesn't work for me"? After months of development and what you thought was adequate customer engagement, these late-stage revelations can send you spiraling back to the drawing board, costing time, money, and team morale.
This episode dives deep into why this painful scenario happens even to the most diligent product development teams and offers three powerful strategies to prevent it.
Slow Down to Speed Up: Jake McKee's Guide to AI Innovation (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
What does it really mean to design relationships with artificial intelligence? Jake McKee, a community strategist with over two decades of experience working with companies like Lego and Apple, brings clarity to this complex question by introducing us to AI Experience Design (AIX).
In this eye-opening conversation, Jake draws a powerful parallel between today's AI transformation and the digital transformation of the early 2000s. The key difference? Scale and speed. While the early web had natural boundaries, AI presents an almost limitless frontier advancing at breathtaking pace. This creates unique challenges for product teams caught between executive...
Uncovering Customer Desires: Understanding Benefits in Concept Development
What truly matters in product design – the features you create or the benefits users experience? In this exploration of a cornerstone concept, we dive into the critical distinction between benefits and features that can make or break your product development efforts.
Benefits describe your users' experience – the positive outcomes and emotional connections that result from using your product. Features, meanwhile, are the tangible, measurable components that make your product work. Understanding this distinction isn't just academic – it transforms how you approach design challenges and communicate value to customers.
Through practical examples from my own website redesi...
Blank Flipcharts Don't Make Magic, But Templates Do
That "fuzzy front end" of product development, where ideas should flourish, often becomes a frustrating quagmire of unfocused brainstorming sessions and competing perspectives. The truth is, traditional brainstorming doesn't work nearly as well as we've been led to believe.
Drawing from research and decades of experience, this episode reveals why teams facing blank flipcharts produce fewer and lower-quality ideas than those using structured approaches. The solution? Visual models and templates—powerful frameworks that channel creativity rather than stifling it. These tools have transformed quality improvement efforts for nearly a century, and they can revolutionize your concept development pr...
Why Your Cross-Functional Team Isn't Communicating Effectively (And How to Fix It)
Have you ever watched a promising product idea slowly die in the fuzzy space between "great concept" and "actual development"? You're not alone.
The journey from product idea to market-ready solution contains a critical yet often overlooked phase: concept development. This is where cross-functional teams must align their diverse perspectives to create a solid foundation for design. But as many product developers discover, this is precisely where communication frequently breaks down.
In this episode, we dive deep into why cross-functional teams struggle to communicate effectively during early concept development and how to fix it.
The Hidden Costs of Poor Concept Development in Product Design
The hidden costs of poor product development can devastate your project timeline, budget, and ultimate market success. Drawing from Dr. Robert Cooper's research, this episode reveals how skipping proper concept development—the critical "fuzzy front end" of product design—leads many teams into a costly "ready-fire-aim" approach.
Most development teams dedicate a mere 16% of project time to concept work, despite evidence showing successful products allocate 75% more resources to these early activities. The consequences? Designs repeatedly scrapped or substantially modified mid-development, wasted engineering hours, multiple unnecessary prototypes, and products that fail to meet customer expectations.
Through prac...
Brighten Your Creative Spark
Ever hit that wall where your creative tank feels bone dry? That moment when you've been grinding away at your projects, head down for so long that when someone asks for innovation, you come up empty? You're not alone.
Creative slumps happen when we get too immersed in our specialized domains. As engineers and designers, we develop expertise through consistent application of familiar tools and techniques. But that same specialization creates mental echo chambers where we recycle the same ideas and follow habitual thought patterns. The result? When innovation is needed most, we feel frustratingly blocked.
<...
QDD Redux: Choosing a Confidence Level for Test using FMEA
Ever wondered if you're wasting resources by setting unnecessarily high confidence levels for your reliability requirements? You're not alone. Many engineering teams default to 95% or 99% confidence without considering the downstream impact on testing timelines and resources.
This episode tackles a question that's been coming up frequently from listeners: how to choose appropriate confidence levels for reliability requirements and test methods. Rather than making arbitrary decisions, I share a practical approach using your existing Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) as a guide. This risk-based method helps you match your confidence levels to the actual risks associated with...
AI in Design: Coming Full Circle
As a Generation X engineer, I've watched design processes evolve from manual drafting kits and hand-derived equations to sophisticated CAD systems powered by artificial intelligence. What fascinates me most isn't the replacement of skills but their enhancement. The engineering fundamentals I learned decades ago haven't become obsolete. They've become more powerful when paired with AI and machine learning tools.
Today's design engineers have unprecedented autonomy. Tasks that once required specialized computing power and expertise are now accessible through AI-enhanced software. This democratization of advanced capabilities doesn't diminish the value of engineering judgment; it amplifies it. Understanding the...
QDD Redux: 5 Aspects of Good Reliability Goals and Requirements
Good reliability requirements are going to drive our design decisions relating to the concept, the components, the materials, and other stuff. So, the moment to start defining reliability requirements is early in the design process. But, what makes a well-defined reliability requirement? There are five aspects it should cover: do you know what they are?
We'll describe what makes a good reliability requirement and examples of common (but not good) requirements.
Visit the podcast blog for links to reliability engineering articles and sites about "No MTBF".
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Supplier Agreements: The Good, The Bad, and The Quality
We dive deep into the intricate relationship between supplier agreements and product quality, highlighting the essential aspects to consider when partnering with suppliers. Quality in design is not just a checkbox; it requires clear communication and collaboration.
• Exploring the challenges of designing custom components
• Discussing the different types of supplier agreements
• The importance of defining and measuring quality expectations
• Navigating multiple vendors in the supply chain
• Developing a quality plan for effective collaboration
If you like these topics, please visit qualityduringdesign.com and sign up for the newsletter.
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Practice Makes Improvement in Subjective Probability Estimations
Does the phrase "Subjective Probability Estimation" make you feel uncomfortable? If you're a data-driven professional, you're likely wary of each of those terms on their own, let alone combining them into one thing.
But we sometimes need to do it. And we can practice to get better at it.
In this episode, we emphasize the importance of subjective probability estimations in decision-making, especially in situations where concrete data may be unavailable or impractical.
We talk about:
• Exploring the discomfort of subjective probability estimations
• Utilizing Monte Carlo simulations for complex systems analysis...
QDD Redux: Quality Tools are Legos of Development (and Their 7 Uses)
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
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Cultivating a Culture of Craftsmanship within Quality Systems
Tradespeople bring expertise, innovation, high quality, and leadership to product development. If we're lucky enough to be able to work with them, they're an invaluable part of the engineering team.
What about when we're working without them? How can we create a culture of craftsmanship in a company that uses a quality system?
In this episode, we talk about the crafts' and trades' relationship with quality systems, and steps toward creating a culture of craftsmanship.
Visit the podcast blog for this episode.
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The Mighty Power of Mini Reports
When you perform analysis and share it with others to make a decision, do you sometimes just send the file with a blurb in an email? Only to not quite remember what you did later, when you need it most.
There's a simple, relatively fast thing to do: a Mini Report. And it provides so much more than just jogging a memory.
Mini reports are a valuable tool for communication in engineering. By using them, engineers can enhance team collaboration, streamline decision-making, and provide mentorship opportunities to junior colleagues.
We talk about:
• Impo...
Celebrating a Year of Insights
Celebrating a year of insights and community growth, this episode reflects on key moments, popular episodes, and the future direction of the Quality During Design podcast. 2024 included episodes focused on actionable insights, deep-dive series, expert interviews, and insightful book reviews. With gratitude for listeners and a commitment to quality, we look ahead to new topics and collaborations for 2025.
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If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar
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Social Dynamics within Engineering with Yakira Mirabito (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
Dianna Deeney interviews Yakira Mirabito about social dynamics within engineering and how it affects decision making. The episode focuses on improving design reviews and making them more inclusive.
Yakira explains how things like personalities and power dynamics can really affect decisions made by design teams. She gives advice to engineers on how to prepare for these reviews, such as how to give presentations effectively and encourage helpful feedback from team members. She also highlights useful tools, like the “Identity Wheel,” to help people understand each other's backgrounds and avoid biases when making decisions. The episode is a grea...
How Engineers Changed Thanksgiving
Have you ever stopped to consider the engineering marvels that make festive meals like Thanksgiving possible? Engineering has played a crucial role in ensuring we can enjoy fresh-tasting vegetables and perfectly preserved foods all year round.
Beyond the realm of food preservation, this episode serves as a tribute to the unsung heroes of our holiday tables: engineers. These individuals are responsible for the seamless functioning of everyday items that enhance our lives. By shedding light on these engineering feats, we hope to inspire a greater appreciation for the engineering community's contributions to making life safer, easier, and...
Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning, AI, and VR in Design Engineering
Discover how predictive analytics, machine learning, AI, and virtual reality reshape some of the ways we approach design. In this episode, we journey from the origins of predictive analytics to the convergence of big data, IoT, digital twins and more, paving the way for innovative product development. We'll also discuss the potential of virtual reality to enhance collaboration and communication within design processes.
This episode isn't just about embracing the latest tech trends; it's about knowing when simpler solutions will suffice and the critical role of data stewardship. This overview will help you to understand the big...
Improving communication and the workplace with Meagan Pollock (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)
Communication challenges in engineering? Dianna Deeney interviews Dr. Meagan Pollock about improving communication and the workplace. They explore how improving communication within cross-functional teams involves active listening, continuous learning, and adapting communication styles to create a more inclusive and productive environment.
Meagan and Dianna talk about:
What can you do today?
Visit Dr. Pollock's website (EngineerInclusion.com) to access free resources on communication and inclusive leadership.Actively engage in...
