Balance the often-opposing demands

The JLBC Cadets engage in an ongoing struggle to balance the often-opposing demands of design: building an innovative product that customers will enjoy. Understanding concepts, JLBC cadets learn to revive the reputation of organizations through packaging functionality with the wow factor.

The next step in developing a concept is building the product or service in a real-life application. Teamwork becomes critical at this point. The concept-building process requires some diversity in skill sets. An electronics engineer knows how to apply energy to transmit information through a system but not how to use physics in the manufacture and design of the system; that’s the specialty of a mechanical engineer. Engineers are not designers—the specialists who know how to enhance the marketability of a product through its aesthetic value. Designers bring their unique value to the team.

When you set out to build any innovative high-tech product, you need to become a master of trade-offs—in compromises resulting from the demands of state-of-the-art functionality on the one hand and fashionable design on the other. Negotiating trades is a team process: it takes at least two individuals to resolve design disputes.