Talk on how design is only a small part of making hardware

[Neilm]

The problem with designing from the end backwards is that you can only really do it if you have a certain degree of confidence and experience. I think newbies still have little choice but to build their efficiency gradually until they master the subject/process.

Even a newbie needs to know what to it wanted. It is a lot easier if you define what it wanted before you start. Otherwise you end up with the following;

Launch = T -12 months 
Marketing give Engineering the spec
Launch = T  -11 months, 30 days -
Engineering go back to marketing saying "Are you you sure you don't want feature X? The last device had it" Marketing weasel “We don't want it – it isn't used by the industry any more”
Launch = T – 3 months Beta build and pre-qualification meeting
Engineering  "Are you you sure you don't want feature X? It will be at least a months work to retrofit." Marketing weasel “We don't want it – it isn't used by the industry any more”
Launch = T – 2 days Marketing weasel “I have some results from the Beta trials. We want feature X for launch”

Should be a Dilbert – it happened to me today.

Neil

[EEVblog]

Aww, too bad she didn't just get on the forum and explain it herself. :/

Why should she have to join a forum just to explain herself to a few people who are having a whinge about the style of her content?
Should she join Adafruit and all the blogs the video was posted on and explain herself there too?
Those that don't like the quality of content should go out there and produce their own content and show us all how it's done.

Dave.

[FreeThinker]

Aww, too bad she didn't just get on the forum and explain it herself. :/

Why should she have to join a forum just to explain herself to a few people who are having a whinge about the style of her content?
Should she join Adafruit and all the blogs the video was posted on and explain herself there too?
Those that don't like the quality of content should go out there and produce their own content and show us all how it's done.

Dave.

Well She obviously felt the need to email you.This is the trouble with the Internet you can be examined in microcosm over  something you considered private or informal, all you can do is grow a thick skin (or stay off the net) I would love her to join the forum as she has obvious passion ,skill, and experience with electronics which we can all learn from.Perhaps some people on this forum could Take the same advice and grow that extra epidermal layer .

[Time]

She doesn't have to.  It just would have been cooler.  If you read anything I said about her I was praising her anways.

[JohnS_AZ]

I don't think she has anything to explain to us. It -would- be cool to have her on the forums however, vocabulary aside, she does seem to be "one of us". 

[quantumfall]

I find it refreshing to have a person  who can talk like that, I would have been offended by her language when I was younger but I now find it, well not much of a problem.  The reason I think my mind has changed is that it was my upbringing and social brainwashing to find language offensive.  I now find PC (political correctness crap) more of a problem.  The history and my culture which I have been in is a mix of styles of language.

We should not be so sad as to take offense.  Its not directed at a person as an assault but as an expression of emotion, its human and good to have emotion. Fuck we are free to say what we like I hope, I fear a future of correctness a lot more .

[EEVblog]

Well She obviously felt the need to email you.

No, she emailed me to say she liked my blog. Didn't even mention the video or comments.
It's only when I mentioned we talked about the comments on her video on The Amp Hour that she responded with the background and context to the presentation.
It's likely she doesn't even know this forum exists.

Dave.

[Zad]

To be honest, whilst I might not like it, I would rather have good honest expletives than the endless management jargon and Health and Safety rubbish that they pollute our lives with nowadays!

[FreeThinker]

Well She obviously felt the need to email you.

No, she emailed me to say she liked my blog. Didn't even mention the video or comments.
It's only when I mentioned we talked about the comments on her video on The Amp Hour that she responded with the background and context to the presentation.
It's likely she doesn't even know this forum exists.

Dave.

It would be nice if you could invite her on to Amp hour and let her express herself in a less stressful atmosphere. She seems a very knowledgeable person.

[saturation]

While her language could be offensive in certain quarters, I too feel her presentation was:

passionate
knowledgeable
driven

She'd make a fine addition to any EE forum or list.

Bob Pease has always been passionate about his craft, and it shows in his talks and writings, but he was more careful in his language.  Its the passion that makes EE interesting and vibrant.

Sounds like she doesn't spend much time with 'normal' people.  If this is the same Amanda Woz, she's from MIT, got her MS from Harvard in EE, and held EE jobs in the best companies.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/avwozniak

Yes, that's her.

She has actually emailed me and has explained the circumstances surrounding that presentation.

Paraphrasing her reason for the language used:
Most of the audience was people she knew, it was a small room at a hacker conference, and apparently the group of mostly software people who wanted/needed a basic presentation of what hardware engineering is, and what mistakes to avoid, as she was afraid this group was potentially very capable of making those same mistakes.
It was also her first time going a presentation.

It gather it was not a presentation aimed at a general audience.

So there you go, the language and attitude becomes more understandable when taken into context of the situation.

Dave.

[mikeselectricstuff]

She's guesting on Adafruit's webcast tonight.

[tyblu]

I liked it. Too bad that she didn't mention any of the gEDA or KiCAD tools while gunning through the "crappy 15 year old CAD tools" part.

[Hypernova]

I liked it. Too bad that she didn't mention any of the gEDA or KiCAD tools while gunning through the "crappy 15 year old CAD tools" part.

Prior impression maybe, open source tools tend to be one of the worst offenders in UI crappyness.

[allanw]

A lot of the really expensive software EDA packages have crappy UI's too... Cadence has been my bane for the last few months.

[Bored@Work]

I liked it. Too bad that she didn't mention any of the gEDA or KiCAD tools while gunning through the "crappy 15 year old CAD tools" part.

But they have crappy GUI's, too. In fact, some really crappy ones. It is some kind of tradition. For whatever reason the open source tools copy the crap professional tool interfaces.

E.g both gEDA and KiCAD copy the brain dead "first select the tool, then apply the tool to the object" mode of historic CAD systems. And these historic CAD systems tried to mimic the way draftsman had to work (fetch pen, draw line). But hello, we no longer deal with physical objects. Really, that "pen" in your CAD system is not a real pen, and needs not be fetched (selected) first and dropped after use.

This is painful if you want to apply a series of operations to one object (e.g. to a schematic symbol). And applying a series to one object is what you typically want. E.g. select a schematic symbol, name it, rotate it, position it, apply a value to it, drop it at its place. You don't want to have a "move tool" to move an object, a "rotate tool" to rotate it, a "properties tool" to name it, etc. Instead, you want to apply a "move operation", a "rotate operation", etc. to a selected object. The modern way "select object, apply operations to it" would be much better.

It is typical that EDA CAD tool GUIs are done by EEs. And most have no fscking clue how to even get the basics right. gEDA's PCB tool GUI, as well as almost every ones of KiCAD's popup windows are examples of not even getting the basics right. Basics like labeling the OK-Button with "OK" and placing it consistently at one (and only one) of the typical locations for an OK-Button. Or basics like using the right GUI widget for the right task, e.g. using a radio button for a "one out of several" selection, instead of strangely connected normal pushbuttons or checkboxes. Or graying out things if you have deselected them, or not using frames in a hopeless attempt to "organize" cluttered windows.

There are many other issues, too. E.g. both assume a waterfall way of working. Roughly: Do schematic, assign footprints, then layout PCB. Good help you if you figure out during PCB layouting that you need to change the schematic, e.g. add a resistor or a binding post. Having to go back is not foreseen in this workflow. gEDA is even worse in this regard than KiCAD, due to gEDA's mix of file formats, which require intermediate file format converters, which are only one-way.