Design it like an engineer.
Like anyone in a technical field, most people I talk to don’t know what I actually do.
I’m a ‘Physical Design Engineer’. What does that even mean?
“I design microchips” is a start. But after 5 years in the job, I’ve noticed that when I try going deeper, I find myself answering a different and more fundamental question — one that’s relevant to anyone who wants to make something great. What is engineering? Here is my answer.
Engineering is design within constraints. (As opposed to design without constraints, which is art).
All engineering tasks begin with constraints. “The bridge must last 100 years before major repair”. That’s a constraint. “It should cost under $100 million”, “we want it done by 2030”.
Time, cost, durability. There are of course many more.
Notice that there are inevitable tradeoffs. We could design the bridge to last 500 years instead of 100. But to do so, we’d likely need monstrous beams and masses of concrete. Doable? Yes. But very expensive, and probably not so nice to look at. Beauty, in this case, is another constraint.
The same is true for any product of engineers, from F-16s to Firefox. Each was designed within constraints, to achieve a particular purpose. It’s no use asking “why doesn’t it do X better?” The answer is always the same: because within the given constraints, that’s the best that could be done.
For microchips, the constraints are always the same: power, performance, size (i.e. cost). In theory, could you build a chip that will power my phone for a week on a single charge? Maybe. But would I want that, if it meant a tiny Nokia 3310-style screen and no Spotify?
So if engineering is design within constraints, what does good engineering look like? Answer: making smart tradeoffs. In software design for example, feature-richness is often traded off against usability. Good designers know how to strike the right balance.
Here’s the key lesson for everyone, not just engineers. You can only make smart tradeoffs when you have a deep understanding of your product’s purpose. Ask yourself “what should my product do better than any other product in the world?” Write that down — those are your constraints.
Now go build it, like an engineer.
