Unsure of what to purchase this holiday season for the design engineer in your life? Here are some excellent ideas to get you started!
Good Design: Cooking Moist Turkey
Don't suffer through dry turkey this Thanksgiving! Learn clever design solutions—like spatchcocking, brining, and deep frying—to cook a perfectly moist and juicy bird every time.
Good Zipper Design
Explore the impact of good zipper design in products like jackets, tents, and backpacks. Learn about materials, sizing, and key design choices for improved user experience.
Skeuomorphs: Relics of the Past
Discover the hidden meaning behind common designs! Learn how skeuomorphs—like 10:10 clock settings and 'ancient' phone icons—use old forms to add familiarity, connection, and aesthetic value to modern products.
Snoopy: Lasting Character Design
Snoopy's design evolution from puppy to ace pilot teaches that great design adapts with its story. Learn how Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts icon proves that embracing product innovation and change creates timeless appeal and recognizable charm.
Explained: How to Write a Memo
Learn how to write an effective memo with our guide on technical formatting for the workplace, including a discussion of headers, the inverted pyramid body structure, and essential writing tips.
Shuffle, Deal, Design: Principles from Card Games
A well-designed card game successfully balances three core elements: progression, randomness, and strategy. This article explores how the interplay and harmony between these fundamental design attributes—which define card games today—can teach us valuable lessons about engineering product development and the continuous process of refinement and trade-offs.
More Than a Profile: LinkedIn Tactics that Get Engineers Connected & Hired
Boost your engineering career with Tony Jewkes! Learn to use LinkedIn as a powerful, keyword-optimized portfolio for discoverability. Tap into your university's influential alumni network to build professional connections and land internships and jobs.
Design Principles Learned From Minecraft
Explore how Minecraft embodies key engineering design principles, including user-centered design, the creative power of constraints, and the importance of iteration and prototyping. Examine in-game experiences alongside real-world examples like the Apollo missions, and learn how players and engineers alike learn to innovate, adapt, and improve through design challenges.
The Evolution of Halloween’s Favorite Tradition
Unlock the surprising design history of trick-or-treating. From ancient rituals to suburban planning and trunk-or-treat, discover how design shapes America's favorite Halloween tradition and its future evolution.
Good Design: Mission Belt v Groove Belt
Mission Belt vs. Groove Belt: discover how these modern designs innovate on the classic belt. Explore the Mission Belt's micro-adjust ratchet and the Groove Belt's simple magnetic buckle with authors John Salmon and Dylan Conover.
Mapping Rick Rubin's "The Creative Act" to Engineering Design
Rick Rubin's philosophy from The Creative Act offers a mindful approach to engineering design, seeing awareness, listening, and constraint as keys to clarity in product development.
Good Design: College Football Edition
Design tells a story! Explore five incredible college football uniforms, from UCF's SpaceU to Navy's Jolly Rogers, and see how great design communicates history and meaning.
From Chaos to Clarity: Modular Design in Programming
Bring clarity to your chaotic code! Learn the three core principles of modular programming (abstraction, encapsulation, cohesion) to build scalable, maintainable, and professional-grade software systems.
Writing Professional Articles: The Little Things That Count
Boost the impact of your professional writing! Learn how formatting and syntax are critical to capturing attention and reducing reader distractions. Follow style guides, master emphasis (use italics and bold, not underlines), and refine sentence structure for clarity and influence.
Exploring the Hype Cycle of AI
Are we nearing an AI winter? Learn about the Gartner Hype Cycle's Trough of Disillusionment, the stage after the peak of inflated expectations where reality tempers the utopian promises of Artificial Intelligence.
Using AI to Study
Harness the power of AI to transform your study habits. Learn how to use artificial intelligence ethically for brainstorming, outlining, summarizing, and editing to achieve academic success.
Good Design from the Summer of 2025
Summer is a time for relaxing but it doesn't mean it's a time to stop exploring innovation. Learn about some good designs that we discovered over the summer of 2025, from beautiful lotus boardwalks and excellent french toast to heatless curls and 3D printing.
Writing Professional Articles: Developing Your Writing
Elevate your professional and academic influence with effective writing. Learn the four pillars of writing — narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive — to communicate with clarity and purpose. Discover how strong writing, even in STEM fields, sets you apart by showcasing your competence and personality.
Clustering in Design Thinking: Making Sense of Empathy Data
Unlock meaningful innovation with design thinking and empathy. Learn how to use clustering to organize raw, human-centered data, uncover hidden insights, and avoid common biases. Discover the history of this powerful technique, from the KJ Method to modern affinity diagramming, and see how it can reframe problems to create truly impactful solutions.