Advice for Design Challenges and Teardowns?

I have a interview with a Engineering Design consulting company. There will be a Teardown of a device and a Design Challenge. Does anyone have any experience with these/have any advice?

Hey @Dexter_Kenta_Yanagis , great question and would love to offer my past experience.

Regarding device teardowns, I’d recommend reading through these consumer electronic teardowns posted by Instrumental [Teardown Archives - Instrumental]. Mainly what the interviewer is looking for is to gauge your competency in common manufacturing processes, assembly steps, and how the device comes together. Above links are very much worth a look to understand how these devices are actually built, along with commentary rom product design engineers.

Design challenges can be a bit tougher as they’re more open ended. Most often, I’ve experienced them in the form of take-home projects. General advice I would offer is to touch base on first-principles engineering and walkthrough your entire engineering intuition (Design, manufacturing steps, testing, etc.). Instrumental also has a very good post linked here [How to Interview a Product Design Engineer - Instrumental]

Good luck and let us know how it goes! Post on the forum about any feedback as I can definitely have a dedicated channel for design challenges. :slight_smile:

P.S. also linking Fictiv’s engineering resources as this is how I learned in college:

Thank you so much!