On incoherence

If you needed proof that we don't know what our roles mean, Behold

Apple's new incoherent job title.

Now we have a "Product design engineer" to engineer the designs of our products I guess.

If you enjoy things that make sense, here's a sensible use of our terminology:

Design is concerned with the interaction of the product with people such as users, stakeholders, the press, and everyone with a pulse.

Engineering is concerned with the interaction of the product with systems like computers, networks, electricity, and everything that's best expressed mathematically.

These are two facets of the same operation, like buying and selling. If you're buying something, someone is selling it. Likewise, If you're engineering something, someone designed it. If you can't find the other person in the equation, it's you. You did both (and probably botched one of them)

The separation between design and engineering is not inherent. It results from the natural division of labor that takes place in an economy. But at the highest levels, you often have to do both, like Archimedes of Syracuse, Leonardo of Florance, and Kowalski of Madagascar.

Unfortunately, we don't have a word for those artists because we frown upon such comingling of professions. But it's also because we aren't comfortable with either design or engineering clearly taking the lead in a product team. We should grow the hell up and decide what kind of team we're in.

A design-led team is one where design sets the target by figuring out a want or a need and a way to solve it. They enlist engineering to see how much of it can be done. That's how Jobs had it.

An engineering-led team does it the other way around. Engineering sets the bar by figuring out a new technology or inventing some 4hit. They enlist designers to see if it can be packaged into something that people might want.

Being led by one or the other is purely circumstantial. If you worked for

3M

, engineering is probably in the lead because you're more bound by the laws of physics and proprietary scientific discoveries that live in the realm of engineering.

But if you're selling consumer electronics, then design probably takes the lead because you're mostly using commodity technologies and the game is played at the packaging level, which is mostly design.

But it's never just like that. It depends. You have to figure it out for your own team. It's worth noting that you can also be led by other considerations like mission, tradition, or politics.

It's also worth noting that some of what we think of as marketing are acts of design, like customer research. Some of it is engineering, like tracking. Some of it is in between, like data analysis. Some of it is neither, like buying ads.

Life isn't complicated when you use words right.

So what's a better Job tile for Daniela? I don't know. I just know that this is malarkey. It makes no sense.