Electronic Design Engineers Designing New Products

Lesley,

Ideas come from everywhere at all time.

● One of my major project ideas came from playing video games. (Still a work in progress at the moment.)

● Another life changing idea came from the need for a tool in manufacturing. (About 3 months to complete and offer publicly.)

● Once I was inspired just looking at a device, came up with an idea and designed it in 20 minutes. I then sent it off to be manufactured. One of my most popular products. (Total time from idea to completion, 30 minutes.)

● Design and brainstorming (I do not like this term, but use it for the lack of a better one) sessions lead to lots of innovation. I am currently working on a few new products in this session, baby step, type way. (3 months in the works.)

● Inspiration from dreams? Absolutely. Another, more lofty goal I had came from a dream. (Work in progress here too, can not do everything.)

● Inspiration comes from everywhere. I was driving home recently and had a great idea. (Again, a work in progress. I have spent about 30 minutes working on the idea so far.)

The list could go on and on, but I will stop here, for now.

Cabe

Hi Lesley,

I agree with Cabe, ideas come from everywhere.  You never know when you suddenly see how to do something really neat.  One of my major sources has always been reading Science Fiction.  Every once in a while, I will read about an idea and after my subconcious has a while to absorb it, I will get a great idea for a new project.

The next part is the hardest, going from the idea to actually going through the process to define it, design it and build it.  Usually only the most useful ideas get to this stage.  Every engineer will tell you, time management is the hardest part of the job.  No matter how neat an idea may be, being able to carve out the time to actually do it is the most difficult part.  Most of the rest of the job is just applying your engineering skills.

The best part of being an engineer is that you are seldom bored.  You can always find something interesting everyday and almost every concious moment.  Engineers are always driven by a desire to create.  It's what we do.

DAB

Hi Lesley,

I have worked for small and large companies.  Each offers different advantages.  Larger companies can get you access to very interesting projects, but you really have to work to get onto one and build up a record of success to make a name there.  I prefer to work a smaller companies, but you end up working a lot harder just because there are fewer of you to do the work.  Still, you find yourself participating in all stages of a project just from the lack of others to do the work.

As an engineer, I would use the tools available, but I would also always been on the lookout for new and better tools.  When the chance to influence purchasing arose, I would go with the parts that had either proven to be good or had been demonstrated to be better than what I had.

Since I was disabled about ten years ago, I have just been doing small home projects, so I do not have an account with Farnell.  My purchasing needs are usually erratic and tend to be small volume. Though interacting with the E14 crowd has spurred me to get back into doing embedded projects, which is something I did early in my career and greatly enjoyed.

Now that I no longer have the pain of time management, I find myself limited by the time of my pain management.  You just can't win.

DAB

Hi Lesley,

I have to agree with DAB on the small company.  For many years I was a repair technician, and always complained about how they designed something.  Along the way I went to school so I could be on the other side of the fence to make things that made sense to some one who has to fix them.  Long story short, I ended up moving away from what I was working with and joined a small company in a niche market.  Because it's a smaller market, the areas of innovation are limited to the application.  I have to think outside the box more to find better ways to compete with the others in our field, and also to accomplish moving forward on a much smaller budget :-).

We do get tasking from our customers for custom configurations of our equipment, which usually drives some of our design inspiration.  Others are driven by having to move the equipment way from older technology, and still be able to maintain the backward compatibility with pre-existing units that have been in the field for 30+ years.  Usually though my tasking changes when something doesn't quite fit with what we have and need to be able to adapt to available components etc.