It means we have ready answers to difficult questions; knowing why we did something the way we did when it isn’t necessarily obvious to others. It means taking a step back, coming to a difficult problem from a slightly different perspective and finding the elegant solution that seems so simple when it is done.
Why is good design essential in the work we do?
If we get it wrong, the consequences can be severe and long lasting, sometimes difficult or impossible to resolve, and almost always expensive to fix.
Whose designs/which designer do you admire and why?
I learned about Bauhaus during my A levels, and the principle of ‘form follows function’. I find this to be a great guiding principle in engineering design – just because there is a design standard which says something should be designed in a certain way, doesn’t mean it will be used in that way – we have to be pragmatic and responsive to the user, and not simply be dogged followers of the rulebook.
