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Quality during Design
Quality During Design helps engineers build products people love—faster, smarter, and with less stress. Host Dianna Deeney, author of Pierce the Design Fog, shares practical tools and quality thinking from concept to execution. Subscribe on Substack for monthly guides, templates, and Q&A.
Episodes
182 episodes
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 lear...
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Season 6
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Episode 11
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15:35
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.
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Season 6
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Episode 10
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10:06
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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 prac...
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Season 6
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Episode 9
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9:50
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 o...
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Season 6
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Episode 8
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18:29
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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 ...
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Season 6
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Episode 7
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14:19
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 opportun...
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Season 6
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Episode 6
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10:37
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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 trans...
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Season 3
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Episode 16
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49:37
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 cust...
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Season 6
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Episode 5
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11:26
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 introdu...
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Season 3
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Episode 15
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51:12
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 produ...
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Season 6
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Episode 4
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13:25
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...
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Season 6
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Episode 3
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12:54
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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 o...
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Season 6
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Episode 2
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11:52
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 f...
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Season 6
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Episode 1
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16:31
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 ha...
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Season 5
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Episode 28
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12:21
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 ...
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Season 5
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Episode 27
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7:57
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 t...
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Season 5
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Episode 26
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12:32
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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 m...
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Season 5
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Episode 25
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14:37
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 communicati...
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Season 5
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Episode 24
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13:16
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...
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Season 5
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Episode 23
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16:55
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
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Season 5
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Episode 22
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13:05
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...
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Season 5
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Episode 21
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11:45
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, relativel...
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Season 5
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Episode 20
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14:39
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,...
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Season 5
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Episode 19
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11:32
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 focuse...
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Season 3
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Episode 14
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44:42
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.<...
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Season 5
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Episode 18
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10:19