Photo credit: Flickr/ Elvin

As engineers, we love to build things. Big things. Complicated things. New things. And, if we’re honest, we’re pretty good at it, aren’t we? There’s just one little problem – does anyone actually want what we’ve built? Maybe yes, maybe no. If yes, we’re golden. If no, we’re in big trouble.

Let me explain.

You see, engineers have this nasty habit of coming up with brilliant ideas. Not that there’s anything wrong with these ideas, but the fact that an engineer came up with them is cause for concern. An engineer who builds something from their own head will likely build something that appeals to themselves, and maybe to other engineers. Have you ever tried to show your non-engineering friends or family a *really* beautiful line of code? How about a schematic diagram that reduces a design’s weight by 10%? How did they react? Exactly. Ho hum.  Your design just doesn’t make them want to get up and shout from the rooftops. That’s because you designed it for you, not for them.

There’s an important lesson to be learned here: your engineering designs are meant to satisfy others, not yourself.

Your engineering designs are meant to satisfy others, not yourself.

If your designs are for you, and you alone, you’ll be happy. But, that probably won’t pay the bills. Your designs are meant to go out into the world and make others happy. That’s part of what makes engineering such a cool profession.

That leaves us with a question: how do you make sure anyone else will dig your design?

It’s good for me, is it good for you?

There are two key words here I want to teach you toady: verification and validation. These two words are very, very important in the life of an engineer, and are cornerstone concepts in the world of systems engineering.

Validation – When you validate your design, you’re asking yourself “Did I build the right widget?” In short, has anyone asked for what you’re building? Has market research told you that the world really needs that widget you’re working on? Is you’re product the best solution to some problem that people have? If yes, then your design is considered “valid”. That’s a good thing.

Verification – This is the act of checking to see if you’ve designed what you set out to design in the first place. This normally takes on the form of testing and inspection. This answers the question “Have I built my widget right?“.

So, for a design to be successful, it needs to be both valid and verified. That means you’ve designed the right thing, and that you’ve designed that thing right. This is super important. Failure to do either of these means something went wrong, and that nobody will want what you’ve ended up designing.

In the table below, I’ve summarized four possible combinations of verification and validation:

For your next design

So, for your next design, you really need to promise me to make sure that it is both valid and verified. Failure to do either means a failure to produce something useful, which is a bad time. Having a design that passes the validation and verification tests have an excellent chance of doing well in the market.

Have you ever seen a design that was either invalid or unverified? Tells me about it in the comments section below!

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