Occasionally in design we get stuck. Maybe you hit a roadblock in the design, or your prototype is doing something strange and you can’t figure it out. It is often helpful to talk about it with someone else. This doesn’t necessarily need to be someone that knows your project or even electronics design principles.
A Cardboard Dummy is someone that you can talk to about your design. They need to know about as much as a cardboard cutout figure. By describing your problem to someone that doesn’t know anything about your design, you are required to break down the design into simpler terms. When you describe a problem to another person, you have to explain any assumptions you have made. Without this explanation they will not understand your design choices.
This process changes your perspective on your design. If you are looking too closely at details, You might not see a macro level interaction or vice versa. The more you have to explain your assumptions the more your perspective has to change.
I have played Steve’s cardboard dummy for a long time and found his insights on designs and people to be very intriguing. He looks for and brings out the best in both. This forum is a great place for people who look at a problem and say “I can fix that.”
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw
Yep, Steve, that’s a powerful principle. Thank you.