Design vs Engineering: Making the Right Choices for Your Project

Hey there! 😃

Do you ever get confused between design and engineering? 😕
It happens to the best of us! But it's super important to know the difference between the two, so you can make the right choices for your project.

Engineering vs Design

👷‍♀️ Engineering is all about solving a problem when you've got all the input data and there's one optimal solution that meets the criteria. Meanwhile, design is all about working with lots of uncertainties, where you just know what you want to achieve, but there are a bunch of different options to get there.

For example, let's say you want to let users buy products on your site. An engineer might immediately start thinking about integrating Stripe or Paypal. But a designer might consider whether a phone number to call to place an order would work better.

🚫 One big trap that developers fall into is skipping the design phase and jumping straight into engineering. This can lead to bad choices and prevent short iterations. To avoid this, always ask yourself: "What problem am I trying to solve with this?"

👉 Here are some examples of how asking the right questions can help you make better decisions:

❌ Task	✅ Better Question
We need ElasticSearch	What searches does the user want to do?
We need Redux	What's holding us back in the frontend code when we want to evolve the UI?
We need Kafka	How do we organize our monolith to speed up developments?
We need NEXT.js	What benefits do we get with server-side rendering?
We need AWS	How does the user perceive the level of availability and performance of our SaaS?
We need GraphQL	How can we optimize the user experience by reducing the number of API requests and improving data fetching?

By asking the right questions, you can make sure you're making decisions that will benefit your users and your project. So don't skip the design phase, and take the time to consider all the possibilities before diving into engineering! 🚀