Are You Letting Fear of Missing Out Dictate Your Requirements?

This article is all about the biggest worry I see over and over again in our clients’ eyes, and what we can do to alleviate those fears both as designers and as managers. A Component-Level Example Here’s how the nightmare goes: a medical device design engineer is working away on a product feature—let’s say an internal battery. The requirements document states that the battery life must be at least 4000 mAh and weigh no more than 300 grams, so they search around with a few vendors and cobble together two options: Option #1 is a 4500 mAh battery that costs $10 and weighs 250 grams. Option #2 is an 8000 mAh battery that costs $11 and weighs 305 grams. The latter could provide double the working life, which would be great for the product, but is over the maximum weight requirement. Here’s where the nightmare gets real: the engineer chooses Option #1 (the smaller battery) and doesn’t tell anyone about the larger option. The product later loses ground to a competitor that has longer battery life and the product manager is to blame for writing out the requirements. This example is a little hyperbolic, but is meant to show a situation that, theoretically, could happen: the engineer is just following the written requirements. What’s even more interesting about this story is that it would never, ever happen for one fundamental reason—engineers are human and are driven by their very nature to pursue efficiency (at least, all the engineers I’ve ever met in my life ar...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Design Source Type: news