Electronic Design Many of the products and gadgets I develop require expertise in a number of areas.  Some systems consist of nothing more than a circuit board with a bunch of bits and wires coming out.  Indeed even complex designs like the wearable almost always start out that way.  I tend to favour a continuous refinement methodology for new ideas.  Usually starting by getting the fundamentals working the building up to the desired design.  It also means that something always works at all stages.  I guess you could group all my work into what is called Embedded Systems Design. A complete system, usually consists of a combination of some or all of the following. Hardware - The component level design. PCB - Make the components more convenient. Firmware - Build low level hardware code.  Software - Build hi-level code and interface.