Why Do We Jump? About the Moment Before We Commit

When a project goes off track, we usually look back and say, “We didn’t define the problem, and we jumped.” That sounds like a process breakdown, as if one good checklist or gate approval would have prevented it.

But design fog runs deeper than missing process. It’s what’s happening in us.

Over the next few episodes on Quality During Design, we’re exploring a quieter question: When we jump to a solution, why?

Before we understand the problem, we start building. We skip questioning and investigating, jump the peak of the design diamond, and reach for a solution that feels like progress, but is really an emotional shield against the discomfort of not knowing. It’s the "Ta-Da Flop" waiting to happen.

In this Season 7 opener, Dianna Deeney introduces the roadmap for this season's arc:

• What the "Anti-Jump" looks like: Staying in the fog on purpose to uncover the design inputs that actually matter.
• Why the jump is so hard to resist: In the moment, jumping doesn't feel like failure—it feels like forward progress.

The Three Internal Engines:

• Speed: When additive manufacturing, digital twins, and AI make building cheap, jumping gets easier.
• Certainty: When we’re convinced we already know, we stop checking.
• The Deeper Engine: A more human driver running underneath both, saved for our season finale.

The Roadmap: How upcoming guests like Ashley Roach (on the "tweak loop" and one-way vs. two-way doors) connect directly into this framework.

Your Practice Question for the Week:
When you catch yourself jumping this week, don’t judge it. Just ask:
"Did I jump because it was easy to build, or because I was certain I already knew?"

Resources Mentioned:

• Featured Book: Pierce the Design Fog: Develop High-Quality Products Faster Through Team Innovation by Dianna Deeney. Learn more at piercethedesignfog.com.
• Double Diamond Diagram: Check out the accompanying graphic in the blog post at deeneyenterprises.com/qdd/podcast/s7e1.

Subscribe to Quality During Design so you don't miss an episode in this season's arc!

Other podcast episodes you may like:

• Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning, AI, and VR in Design Engineering
• Stop Being a Witness to Decisions That You Should be Helping to Shape
• Foundations-Exploring the Problem Space, A Key Principle for Robust Product Design and Project Success
• The Design Fog is Derailing Your Project

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

Transcript

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What Design Fog Really Is

Dianna 0:00

Design fog isn't a single thing. When we talk about it, we usually mean we didn't define the problem and we jumped. That sounds like a process breakdown, like one good checklist would fix it, but the fog runs deeper than the process. It's also what's happening in us. The next few episodes are going to be an arc where we explore a quieter question. When we jump to a solution, why? Not what's missing in our process, what's happening in us? The answers aren't one thing. There are several. We're zooming in on three of them, three that live in how we think. There are other reasons we jump, how we run and rush team meetings, how information gets lost in the handoff, the assumptions we never stop to examine. Those live and pierce the design fog. This arc is about the three internal engines Here's the thing that makes it worth our time to study this. The fix isn't just see it and willpower. Deliberate structures can help us hold the not knowing instead of jumping. A structure can help us train the reflex. Let me introduce this arc a little more after the brief introduction.

Holding the Not Knowing

Dianna 2:08

Design fog is what happens when we cross from the problem space into the solution space too early. Before we understand the problem, we start building. We skip the questioning and investigating, jump the peak of the diamond, and reach for a solution that feels like progress, but is really a shield. It's the ta-da flop waiting to happen. Check out the blog post associated with this episode, and I'll attach an informational graphic that best describes this. So that's the design fog and jumping too early. Now, what the anti-jump looks like is that we're staying in the fog on purpose. We're holding the not knowing so we can question and investigate before we build. That's not stalling. That's where the good design inputs come from Here's the thing about the jump. It doesn't feel like failure in the moment. It feels like progress. That's what makes it hard to resist.

Three Engines Behind the Jump

Dianna 3:17

So then why do we jump? The FOG has more than one engine We're going to be covering three. One engine is speed. It is easier than ever before to start building things and to build them cheaply. We have digital twins, we have AI, we have additive manufacturing and cheaper prototyping. When the building gets cheap, the jumping gets easier. Another engine is certainty. When we're sure we already know, we stop checking and we just move forward. This is also a problem in classical problem-solving. If we don't properly define the problem, we may miss out on the root cause or the real solution to it. And the third engine runs deeper And the third engine is the deeper one running underneath the other two. We're going to be covering these engines in one arc. So one arc,

Arc Roadmap and Upcoming Guests

Dianna 4:31

three different faces or engines. This episode is a map, and the upcoming guests to the show are going to fill in the stops Now, there's a reason that I'm starting this arc with an introductory episode, because naming the faces now means each upcoming conversation lands inside a framework that we're already in. They're not a random guest. We're building one idea with a pattern spotting approach. And in this arc, I'll keep pointing you to one place to practice it: pierce the design fog. Because the reflex may be human, but the way we train against it can be structural In the upcoming episode that releases in a couple weeks, Ashley Roach joins us to talk about speed. He talks about when making building things cheap and fast, the hard part stops being can we build it and becomes should I stop tweaking and put it in front of real users? He'll show us the trap of falling in love with a prototype, the loop of I could just tweak this one thing, and he gives a way through it, the one-way, two-way door, the test for whether a decision is safe to ship and learn from. Then another guest is going to be joining us to talk about certainty. When we're confident we already know the customer and problem, we may commit before we check. And if speed is the tool and certainty is the excuse, what's underneath both?

Practice Question and Wrap Up

Dianna 6:09

Why is the fog so hard to sit in? There's a reason, and the most human one, and it's the last conversation of this arc So I ask you to subscribe to the podcast so you'll get each new episode as it drops I'll leave you with a quick question. When you catch yourself jumping this week, don't judge it. Just ask, "Did I jump because it was easy to build or because I was certain I already knew?" Start there, and then we'll add the third question over this arc. I look forward to exploring this topic with you This has been a production of Deeney Enterprises. Thanks for listening