[tedkimble]

I enjoy the discussion between engineering and design.

I used to think of myself as an engineering-type person. I engineered solutions. Indeed, my undergraduate education was in math and physics. But then I began a lengthy graduate design education in architecture and, in the process, began to design solutions. I had become a design-type person.

Yet when I reflected on these two types of tasks -- engineering and design -- I realized they were not different types of tasks at all. Rather, engineering and design are two different approaches to the singular task of creation: design is creation in which decisions are based primarily upon qualitative metrics; engineering is creation in which decisions are based primarily upon quantitative metrics. I was instead simply a creative-type person, just one with an ability to approach problems with both engineering and design eyes.

Perhaps my most important observation is that engineering and design are fundamentally more similar than different. And by improving your abilities in either, you are improving your abilities at that which is similar: the creative process itself.