Design and Me: BFFs?

This post should catch you up on what I've done so far.

In the Winter of 2005, I saw an episode of 20/20 that featured a company called IDEO. They are a design firm; this was the first time I'd come across this concept. The video showed a group of people (engineers, anthropologists, psychologists, and artists) redesigning the shopping cart. It looked creative and collaborative and generally super-fun. I stuffed away the desire to chase such a career because I was dead-set on going to grad school.

I think it was about two months ago that I remembered design. I performed a Google search (this blog is hosted by Google, so I don't want to offend them by turning their name into a verb) on IDEO to see if they were still around. They are. I looked at their job descriptions, just to see if I could maybe dare to hope that I might have a chance. In my opinion, they describe me exactly as their ideal candidate: have an advanced degree, am not a specialist, have desire for and comfort working in teams, and have a wide range of interests. I may or may not have pranced happily around my apartment feeling that there was at least one job out there that sounded really appealing to me.

IDEO isn't hiring someone with no design experience (not right now, at least). But I have discovered that there are many other design firms in Chicago. So, if I really want to do design, I feel I have a chance. However...

Am I idealizing design? It would be a horrible to put months of effort into being marketable as a designer to find out that the job entails making models in CAD all day. Most of my effort so far has been in figuring out what design is and how I can enter it if it is what I think it is. Here's what I've done so far:

-I had a phone informational interview with a guy (whose title I didn't ask - small mistake) at a Chicago design firm. He was brief, but very helpful. Our conversation lasted maybe 8 minutes. The gist of his advice was that I'd be naive to think that I could get into design with my current background. He thinks I should enter the real world, doing product design of some sort more from the engineering side of things.

-I had an in-person informational interview with the president and founder of another Chicago design firm. He was totally chill. I'm glad that I didn't wear a suit, as he was wearing dirty jeans and a long-sleeve "Life Is Good" shirt. On the way to the interview room, we got to walk through the huge room where all the designers sit. It was beautiful. In about the middle of the room, with the approximately 10 designers all within ear-shot, he stopped walking and asked somewhat accusingly "Do you have a portfolio?". It was clear that I didn't have a portfolio. After a silence which seemed uncomfortable to me only, he said "Oh wait... who are you?" He had mistaken me for someone who he was to interview for a position at his company. So, I hope you understand what kind of guy he is: entrepreneurial enough to start a design firm, talented enough to keep it running, and no-nonsense enough to call me out in front of everyone for potentially wasting his time.

And he talked with me for an hour! It only stopped when it did because I am uptight and felt like I'd taken up too much of his time. He gave me all kinds of advice, though it was a little hard to stop him talking about himself and his work (I figure that giving the interviewer a forum for them to toot their own horn is the price you pay for the information you get).

Now, the advice he gave me isn't super interesting: places that might offer me an internship/job, grad programs I might try, skills I should pick up (software: PRO/E, CAD, and CS ActionScript), and so on. But he did ask me a good question: "What do you want to do?". I've asked myself this question many times; it's way, way different with someone so able and respectable staring at you waiting for an answer. You see, design is split into different realms, and you can do one or all depending on your position and where you work. You can try to get the design bids from other companies, you can be a receptionist, you can engineer and build prototypes, you can manage the projects and keep an eye an the marketability, you can try to sell designs to companies, and so on. He wanted to know what I wanted to do at a design firm. And even in that context, with my options more limited than when I consider engineering vs. puppeteering, I had to tell him that it all sounds fun. He told me that I might want to get some project management experience if I wanted to do it all at a design firm.

-I met with Liz Gerber, a professor in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. You could say that I networked, since she is a friend of a friend. Our meeting had to be short because Liz is quite a busy person. She thinks I can get into design as I am right now (or maybe with a few years of real-world experience), but I'll have to do some networking and maybe find some way to sample the career. She also recommends that I generalize my skills on my resume, so people can see that I can do more than engineering. She also thinks I should try putting together a sample portfolio if I really want to do design. I'd always been confused about what a portfolio is; she pointed me to some sample portfolios so I could see what they entailed. She reinforced my belief that engineers are trainable by saying that I'm smart.

That's all of the information I've gathered on design so far. It still seems as collaborative and creative as I originally thought. I'm still interested. But what do I want to do? I'm wondering whether the appeal of design is the product creation and ideation aspect. I have a few more informational interviews lined up with some folks in the design field, so maybe I can hammer out these loose ends with them.

p.s. According to Blogger, "naive" is spelled correctly without its typical umlaut. I've been waiting years for the internet to get rid of English's last umlaut. Our day has come!