Dianna Deeney, Author at Deeney Enterprises

Slow Down to Speed Up: Jake McKee’s Guide to AIX (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

Dianna Deeney interviews Yakira Mirabito about social dynamics within engineering and how it affects decision-making.

Uncovering Customer Desires: Understanding Benefits in Concept Development

In product development, we often get caught up in the technical specifications and features we’re creating, forgetting the fundamental reason we’re building products in the first place: to provide benefits that improve users’ lives. This foundational concept of benefits versus features deserves revisiting regularly, especially when we’re deep in the weeds of development work. Subscribe…

Blank Flipcharts Don’t Make Magic, But Templates Do

In product development, the “fuzzy front end” of concept development often represents both tremendous opportunity and significant challenge. During this critical phase, teams are tasked with defining problems, understanding customers, and generating solutions-all before any engineering begins. How we navigate this phase dramatically impacts bottom-line results, market share, customer satisfaction, and whether projects even launch…

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…

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. We also explore “Quality during Design” as a way forward…

Brighten Your Creative Spark

When you’re too deep in the daily grind, your innovative thinking suffers. Try these three proven techniques to brighten your creative spark.

AI in Design: Coming Full Circle

As a Generation X engineer, I’ve witnessed remarkable shifts in how we approach design engineering. Recently, I saw an article suggesting Gen X is frustrated because the skills we learned early in our careers no longer apply in today’s technological landscape. This characterization made me pause and reflect. While our tools have certainly evolved dramatically,…