New Product Parenting

OK, so it’s not the 1990s anymore, but as our last decade of reference, let’s look at what it was like being a parent in the 90s, and how closely it relates to being a design engineer in the communication market.

What to expect when you’re expecting

As of this issue, I am 8 months pregnant with my first child, and my book collection on child rearing has swelled just as rapidly as my belly. My readings have shown me how similar being a parent today is to being a design engineer. It goes without saying that being a design engineer is about creating a new “product,” and this new product brings along with it the same high hopes and expectations as a new child does for a parent.

Other aspects of how design engineering is like parenting in the 90s: doctors expect new parents to foster greater intelligence in their young before they are even born, through classical music, special soundwave boxes, and reading to a child in the womb; scientists expect design engineers to improve product capacity by adding more lines of code, or by adding function-specific hardware. The average design-cycle window is about the same at a steady 9-month time frame, and if the “product” comes out too early, fundamental problems may ensue. If parents are, for some reason, unable to finish the task, modern science brings in the fertility specialists or the surrogate parents; in the design world, the main project engineers rely on new design services to overcome production obstacles. The newborn “product” has so many expectations of it before the little “product” can even prove its worthiness to the “family” who hopes it will create a family legacy.