We’ve all been in the meeting where a project is three months into detailed design, and someone from the back of the room finally sees the CAD or the spec and says: “We tried this two years ago. Here is why it failed.”
At that moment, the room goes cold. You realize that the knowledge to avoid a massive mistake was already in the building. It just didn’t have a path into the conversation when the conversation was happening.
In this week’s podcast episode, I’m sharing the results of an experiment that made this “fog” visible in a way I didn’t expect.
I ran three product concepts (a solar service redesign, a medical device, and a field harvester) through two different development approaches. I used identical teams (simulated via AI agents) and the same product briefs.
The results were a stark reminder that features are not the same thing as clarity.
The Traditional Approach produced legitimate work: feature lists, risk registers, and specs. Most organizations would have stamped these “Ready for Engineering.”
The Structured Approach produced the same features, but with a critical difference: Context.
The side-by-side results of the three case studies.
The “Three-Question Filter” you can apply to any design input this week.
Why “ready enough” is where expensive ambiguity hides.
https://deeneyenterprises.com/qdd/podcast/the-knowledge-your-team-has-that-nobodys-using/
Throughout this month, I am publishing a breakdown video series on YouTube showing side-by-side outputs from this experiment. If you want to see exactly how structured concept development looks in practice check out the links below.
www.youtube.com/@qualityduringdesign
If you found this insight helpful, consider sharing it with a lead engineer or project manager who is currently navigating their own design fog.
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