QDD Redux: How to self-advocate for more customer face time (and why it's important) Artwork

Quality during Design

Quality during Design is the podcast for engineers and product developers navigating the messy front end of product development. Each episode gives you practical quality and reliability tools you can use during the design phase — so your team catches problems early, avoids costly rework, and ships products people can depend on.

You'll hear solo episodes on early-stage clarity, risk-based decision-making, and quality thinking, along with conversations with cross-functional experts in the series A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts.

If you want to design products people love for less time, less cost, and a whole lot fewer headaches — this is your place.

Hosted by Dianna Deeney, consultant, coach, and author of Pierce the Design Fog. Subscribe: newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com.

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Quality during Design

QDD Redux: How to self-advocate for more customer face time (and why it's important)

May 24, 2023 • Dianna Deeney • Episode 96

0:00 | 13:43

We've been talking about how to best work with our cross-functional team at early concept development - to use quality and reliability tools in working meetings to really understand the concept space as a way to design for how the customer may experience our new concept idea.

Coming out of our talks make be questions about unknowns or misalignments. We may need to meet our customers where they're at to get clarity.

When engineers say, "I'd like to talk with a customer about this," we usually get push-back.

We need to tackle objections and remove obstacles between design engineers and their customers. For ideas, I've pulled an episode from the archive, originally published December 2021.

Listen-in to learn how we can take next steps in the concept space when visiting customers.

See the podcast blog for some more information.

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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)

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