Tailored Coaching for Engineers
Excel in Design, Foster Team Synergy
As a product design engineer, you need to make design decisions based on clear information, without the hassle of functional silos or late-stage "Ta-Da Flops".
You want higher quality products, better relationships with your team, and to achieve star performance. This requires effectively collaborating with cross-functional teammates and translating their diverse knowledge into actionable engineering inputs.
You're a design engineer pulled in a million directions, trying to satisfy countless stakeholders. But when you finally present your work, it's picked apart, rejected, or met with a resounding "meh." You're tired of the "Ta-Da Flop" – pouring hours into designs only to go back to the drawing board.
Personalized Coaching to Elevate Your Skills
My personalized coaching is designed specifically for engineers like you who want to excel in concept development and advance their careers.
Together, we'll focus on:
- Turning diverse knowledge into clear design inputs.
- Building quality and reliability into your designs from day one.
- Mastering team collaboration to get the feedback you need, early.
- Applying powerful tools like the ADEPT Team Framework and Concept Space Model.
- Boosting your performance to become the go-to design engineer.
Ways to Avoid Early Concept Design Challenges
Learn practical ways to develop design concepts.
The ADEPT Team Framework and Concept Space Model provide you with the practical methods to gather the fact-based inputs you need early in the design process. Individual coaching offers personalized guidance to help you master these techniques, apply them to your specific projects, and transform shared knowledge into winning product designs.
Get Actionable Design Inputs Early
The Concept Space Model gives you a structured way to explore customer experiences – their desired Benefits, potential Symptoms, and Use Process.
This helps you gain deep user insight and translate it directly into concrete inputs for your engineering work, reducing the frustration of designs being picked apart late.
Collaborate Effectively with Your Team
The ADEPT Team Framework provides a repeatable process for planning and leading focused co-work sessions with your cross-functional team.
This helps you foster shared understanding, ensure valuable knowledge is captured, and build buy-in for your design decisions by involving teammates from the start.
Improve Design Clarity and Reduce Rework
By exploring the concept space and potential problems early, you can anticipate issues and define requirements with greater clarity, beyond concepts.
This leads to less rework and helps you design higher-quality, more reliable products faster.
You covered a lot of material in a very clear practical manner. The example was very helpful showing how the Quality tools can be used in a real-life example."
Cary Enslow, Reliability Engineering Expert at HP, Inc.
re: "Quality Tools Training" custom training program
It was such a pleasure working with Dianna in designing a workshop on Reliability Fundamentals for my company. She exemplified professional work habits and followed through with her proposals. Her presentations encouraged us to think through our problem solving process and use reliability and stats tools to assess risks and help us make informed decisions.
Rachelo Kay, Quality and Reliability at Calix
What Coaching Might Look Like
Ready to dive deeper? My coaching packages are designed to empower engineers to excel at concept development and transform knowledge into actionable technical design inputs.
Here's a glimpse of a typical coaching package, tailored to your unique needs:
Example Coaching Package: The Design Accelerator
This popular package focuses on immediate impact and lasting skill development.
- Kick-off Session (2 hours): We'll set clear goals and map out your coaching journey.
- 6 Individual Sessions (60 mins each): Bi-weekly, one-on-one guidance personalized for you.
- Practical Tools & Resources: Access to assessments, templates, and a curated library to support your learning.
- Ongoing Support: Unlimited email support between sessions for quick questions and feedback.
Key Outcomes: You'll master gathering information, translating it into clear design inputs, enhancing team collaboration, and making confident, evidence-based decisions – ultimately accelerating your product development cycle.
Ready to Explore Your Options?
Every engineer's journey is unique. Let's chat about how I can best support your project and career goals.
Tired of Endless Rework and Rejected Designs?
Stop the frustration. Get exclusive strategies for engineers to secure early, fact-based inputs, integrate user experience seamlessly, and build products customers truly love, right from the start.
Introducing an Online Course
FMEA in Practice: From Plan to Risk-Based Decision Making
link opens in Udemy
QDD Versus Video Series
Get Quality and Reliability Engineering fundamentals from a Product Design Engineering point-of-view.
This video series introduces you to quality and reliability topics from a product design point-of-view. It introduces several topics by comparison in just 8 episodes.
- each episode builds upon the previous ones
- focused on relationships to product design engineering
- "crash courses" - each episodes is less than 15 minutes
- graphics in videos and Venn diagrams in the notes help drive home concepts
- several options: watch the video, listen to the podcast, read the transcript, and/or read the notes.
At the end of the series, you'll have a framework for your own application of Quality Thinking that can help with the success of your designs.
Quality during Design Redux: Test Results Analysis
We're pulling episodes from our archives about test results analysis. Download the latest episode from your favorite podcast provider, and check back here for the next episodes.
Popular Podcast Episodes for Engineers
Product Design from a Data Professional Viewpoint, with Gabor Szabo (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)
An interview with Gabor Szabo in “A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts”.
Supplier Control Plans and Design Specs
Supplier control plans and design specs can go hand-in-hand in the quest for quality. Learn how control plans can benefit your design process.
Always Plot the Data
We don’t just rely on the numbers – we always plot the data! We review how we use plots to look past the numbers and common gotchas.
How to Manage Risks
There are at least five different ways to manage risks of the product design itself and the new product development process.
2 Lessons about Remote Work for Design Engineers
What are 2 lessons about remote work, coming out of the pandemic? We talk about a couple of perspectives that can apply to design engineering.
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Supplements Test
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is not a substitute for product test. It can be used as a supplement to design and test. We talk about when to work with Quality Engineers and Reliability Engineers for next steps.
Graphic attributions: People illustrations by Storyset Engineer Image by DCStudio on Freepik