Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1400005
42 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2021 texts of Howard Johnson, Eric Bogatin, and Bruce Archambeault; for someone with a design or two under his belt these are quite valuable reads. But particularly for ver y new designers, the terminology in these books can be intimidating, especially if the designer does not have a deep engineering background. Of course, if senior staff are available as mentors, this can be one of the most valuable resources of all. Given their knowledge of your organization's exact processes and preferred design methodology, mentoring by a more senior designer is probably the most direct and focused way to get the information needed to begin as a junior designer. Unfortunately, in many cases a mentor is not available or practi- cal for the organization to provide, and design- ers are le to fend for themselves. For a junior designer, I think a good com- promise can be to spend time studying com- mercial products. Millions of designer-hours have been invested in optimizing the PCBs in the products we use every day, and it is pos- sible to glean some of that knowledge with a keen eye. I always keep a drawer full of scrap boards somewhere around my workstation, and when I hit a wall on a design I like to pull out a relevant one and spend a few minutes looking it over. It doesn't always result in a critical insight, but it helps to break my mind out of its block and suggest different ways that things can be done. is can be particularly useful for a junior designer without a lot of personal experience to pull from. In any case, it can prompt further research. But for all the concrete resources avail- able, there's one more nebulous concept that deserves mention, and which can be used to make the best of the resources you do have. ere's a phrase I like to use, perhaps to the detriment of my own career prospects: I'm not a great engineer, but I'm a pretty good problem solver. I don't easily retain book knowledge, and to this day I'd have to pick up a textbook to quote anything but the most basic engineering equations. But I have always understood the importance of being able to analyze a problem or task and break it into smaller parts. e ability to think critically about a design, determine its inputs and outputs and the func- tional blocks, and separate them into work- able pieces is to me the most important skill an engineer or designer can have, because with it an arbitrarily complex design can be made manageable. is can be applied to design, breaking down the structure of a widget to its elemental functions and handling the impor- tant features of each one individually. Or it can be applied to testing and troubleshooting, identifying the signals going in and coming out, and what operations should be happen- ing in the middle to narrow down a problem area. Anyone can pick up a textbook when they need to, but problem-solving skills like this are more abstract and usually not taught outright. Ultimately, by that logic, your success as a designer depends not only on what resources you have available, but also on how you apply them. In my experience, the best designers are ones that are flexible, that can adapt to chang- ing requirements or unfamiliar scenarios. Because as the market for electronics contin- ues to evolve, there will continue to be new and unique problems to tackle. DESIGN007 Michael Steffen, CID, is a senior electrical engineer with Crystal Group. Of course, if senior staff are available as mentors, this can be one of the most valuable resources of all.