Technical Chops
I started my career as a software engineer and architect, giving me professional-level knowledge of software design patterns and database design. I have worked in large and small code-bases in many languages from C++ to SQL, and recently I have been studying machine learning in Python. This has given me the ability to quickly come up to speed on the deeply technical aspects of a project and integrate them into my design thinking, avoiding expensive time wasted pursuing un-implementable design ideas.
One example of this is the Voice Control TV project at Samsung. The existing corporate structure positioned product management as message carriers between the design and engineering organizations. This often resulted in frustrating games of “telephone” where nuanced engineering feedback about which parts of the design were difficult or time-consuming got simplified into “they can’t do it.”
When I joined the project I quickly got up to speed on the voice recognition technology stacks that were available at the time. This helped me understand the potential technical issues and communicate more effectively with the engineering team about their concerns. At Samsung HQ in Korea my technical skills allowed me to build rapport with their normally-resistant engineering team. Because of this we were able to find compromises to avoid exceeding the performance budgets of the limited hardware without sacrificing features critical to an excellent user experience.
Understanding the technology stack from top to bottom not only allowed me to make a design that was implementable, but allowed me to differentiate between engineering’s hard “no” (that’s not possible) and soft “no,” (that sounds tricky) both of which are often phrased as “yes".