Design Engineering Handbook
By Natalya Shelburne, Adekunle Oduye, Kim Williams, Eddie Lou, and Caren Litherland (editor)
Design Engineering Handbook is a practical guide to bridging the gap between design and engineering—transforming collaboration into a competitive advantage. Written by leaders from The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it offers a clear framework for integrating design and development to move faster, validate ideas earlier, and create better products.
Through real-world examples, you’ll learn how design engineers operate at the intersection of form and function—building prototypes, establishing design systems, and translating between disciplines.
You’ll learn proven processes for:
Building collaborative workflows between designers and developers
Using prototyping to validate ideas and uncover edge cases early
Structuring design engineering teams for maximum impact
Avoiding common pitfalls like skill siloing and gatekeeping
Leading and scaling the discipline within different organizational models
Whether you’re an individual contributor looking to define your career path or a leader aiming to integrate design engineering into your company’s DNA, this handbook provides the tools and insights to unlock faster innovation, stronger teamwork, and better products.
Length: 102 pages
Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers
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What’s in Design Engineering Handbook
Introducing Design Engineering
Defines the discipline of design engineering, dispelling the “unicorn” myth, and shows how specialists at the intersection of design and engineering create value, improve collaboration, and accelerate innovation through prototyping, systems, and workflows.
The Design Engineering Process
Outlines the core principles of value, usability, feasibility, and business viability, and demonstrates how design engineers apply rapid prototyping, iterative testing, and collaborative workflows to ensure products are both desirable and buildable.
Engineering Collaboration
Explores the cognitive and cultural shifts needed for effective cross-disciplinary work, offering strategies to overcome siloed thinking, align mental models, and build systems that make collaboration visible, repeatable, and scalable.
Design Engineering Organizational Models
Examines centralized, decentralized, and hybrid team structures, evaluating their trade-offs in resourcing, product knowledge, competencies, and career growth, and offering guidance on choosing and evolving the right model for your organization.
Design Engineering Leadership
Provides a playbook for leading and growing design engineering teams—covering hiring, career paths, mentorship, and advocating for the discipline—while aligning with business goals and fostering a culture of collaboration and learning.
A Design Engineering Manifest
Summarizes the philosophy, values, and commitments that underpin successful design engineering, inspiring practitioners and leaders to champion the discipline as a catalyst for better products and stronger teams.
Subscribe and get the entire library
When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Design Engineering Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.
Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.
Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.
Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.
Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.
DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.
Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.
Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.
Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.
Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.
About the authors
Natalya Shelburne
Natalya Shelburne is a product Design manager of design systems at Data Dog. Formerly, she was a director of Github’s design system, and a senior software engineer at The New York Times. She has a background in art, psychology, and creativity research. Her work bridges design and engineering to foster better collaboration.
Adekunle Oduye
Adekunle Oduye is an independent consultant supporting companies like Grammarly. Formerly, he was a UX engineer at Mailchimp, building design systems for millions of users. A lifelong New Yorker, he’s also a mentor and board member at Code Cooperative, supporting tech education for formerly incarcerated individuals.
Kim Williams
Kim Williams leads design at Atlassian. She previously headed UX at Indeed and design systems at eBay, championing design engineering as a driver of innovation. She’s also lead design at Meta, Instagram and Twitter.
Eddie Lou
Eddie Lou is an independent consultant and formerly a senior UX director at Indeed, where he led the design system and design engineering teams. With prior roles at Apple, Visa, and PayPal, Eddie brings deep experience at the intersection of UX and front-end development.
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