Interning at Smart Design NY

 

 
Interning at Smart Design was one of the best things that have ever happened to me. So naturally it needs a blog post. I was extremely lucky to have had the chance to do it. I learnt a crazy amount and on top of that the people I met were second to none. So this post is a summary of what it was like and stuff...

I got my chance after degreeshow where an ex PDE graduate had left me a business card on my project area (cheers Jamie your a legend). Cutting long story short I emailed my portfolio and CV to him and about 7 weeks later I was standing in Manhattan within a design consultancy I have heard so much about.

It wasnt easy getting to Manahattan. I had to decide between a full time job offer at a large consumer electronics company to do it. I struggled to decide but as I had just graduated I decided to take the risk. When else are you going to have the chance to travel and work.

New York Baby!!

So on top of being able to learn from such a famous company it was also situated in such a  famous location. I just couldnt resist walking through Manhattan, living in Brooklyn, hanging out where all those hipsters go, basically doing all those cliche typical things.

I managed to find a place to live in Brooklyn specifically in Forte Green within a brownstone building. It was really nice and it was only about 50 minutes to work everyday. Everything looked like it was the movies lol. Furthermore, there was always something to do after work, I was never ever bored. It was so cool :)

The Work:

 
First day of work was SCARY, going to a place you have heard about so much about had left me quite nervous. In fact I don't think I fully settled in until about my 2nd month, thats when I felt I was bedded into the Smart way of things. 


Smart are so good with interns, you get treated really well and they train you in things you are not sure on. My approach to things was if I didn't know I would go and ask. Everyone there really knew their stuff so it was to my benefit to ask and learn, of which I did a lot of.

I got real responsibilities from the get go. I was lucky in a sense that when I got there they had started a new OXO project and I was thrown in with the team and my adviser was able to show me the ropes (cheers Charlie). From then on I got more work if I ever had nothing much to do, I just asked. But generally I was pretty busy.

Work was a combination of concept generation, development, some CAD and also a lot of time spent in the workshop building and exploring (I loved it!). I have always been a very workshop type person. You would be surprised by how far you get by just getting an idea into a 3 dimensional form and investigate. It just made working at Smart so much fun as they encourage building stuff all the time. The models makers were just legendary.

The People:
Everyone really knows their shit and were super talented at what they did. Its such a busy office with people doing stuff all the time but at the end of every week people finished work an hour early and we all have happy hour. A few drinks and some fußbal is something I really miss now. Its such a lively place to work at, the culture that they have in the office was really cool.

Hurricane Sandy:
I really did get the full experience working in New York. I even got to be in hurricane Sandy! That was a week stuck in the apartment waiting it out until the office was good to go back to.Couldn't believe it!

It was all a bit of a blur really. One day after work my flatmate just told me to get some extra supplies as there was some bad weather coming. At that moment I was thinking in my head WHAAAATTTT!? and then the image of the Day After Tomorrow just jumped into my mind lol. So I was like buying all sorts of extra supplies thinking we would be stuck in dark ages and probably end up having to trade tins of food for heat and shelter lol. But it wasn't that bad at all where I was.

The hurricane past over in a day or two and we were ready to go back to work but the office building had been flooded so that meant a week in the apartment and just doing a little bit of exploring. However when we all got back to the office it was freezing as the heating system was flooded. I remember it was so cold in the office I was struggling to type and use my mouse as my hands were just frozen. At that point I started to come up with ideas for how we could have self heated pens, keyboards and computer mice so we could work in the freezing office lol.

All Good Things Come to an End:
I have a natural tenancy to be over critical of myself as I'm a bit of a perfectionist. So when I got my internship review back I was really surprised at how well they thought I did. In fact they even offered to extend my internship!

In other circumstances I would have taken the chance to stay and fight for a full time job but that was not to be. My finances were shot to pieces. 5 years of Uni debt and a very scary overdraft that had payed for my internship was looming over me. On top of  all that I was given a full time job in a development consultancy back in the UK. All of which fitted my needs at the time given my families circumstances.

It wasn't easy leaving. It was by far the most awesome place I've ever had the chance of being at. In fact I was toiling over staying right up until the last 2 days of being in New York. In the end I just thought taking out another loan to stay for another 3 months that was not certain to get me a full time job offer was just a little too risky. So I decided to go with my head instead of my heart.

Overall it was the best experience a product design engineer could have. Getting to learn and gain insights into the approach Smart Design has on developing products has been so valuable. I now use what I have learnt from my experience at Smart every day at where I work now, which is a testament to how valuable my experience was.

The Boundary of Design and Engineering

People always say you are either creative or a technical person. I watched the Apprentice on the BBC and Lord Sugar said he has never met a creative engineer before. I would like to disagree and say there are plenty of those types of people.

People I have worked with in the past have been either a designer or an engineer or like me a PDE. I like being both and blurring the lines between the two disciplines. However, it does leave me thinking that I am a bit of a "jack of all trades, master of none" but so far it's only been an advantage in my career.

I graduated with an undergraduate Masters degree in Product Design Engineering. It was a lot of hard work and fun, of which I will discuss those stories in another post. So back to this one, it was a combination of design and engineering. I got to go to Glasgow School of Art for product design engineering as well as University of Glasgow to do mechanical engineering. Everything I did was project based learning at the art school with the initial stages of design work always required research concept generation with the core being user centred design. We all tinkered with things always tried to apply our engineering knowledge to develop concepts and make them feasible. It was always a hands on design process. You come up with an idea, sketch it to investigate the details, maybe do some back of the envelope calculations but you would always head into the workshop to build and try out your idea. So I have never seen anything different. I have always moved between the boundaries of these disciplines. I believe that by combining both design and engineering you are able to truly create elegant design solutions. Where aesthetics and mechanical aspects can act together and therefore breakout from the normal of having "something" wrapped in a shell.

So when people say you are either one or the other I disagree, you can't really have one without the other. The best designers I have ever work with had a lot of engineering knowledge and vice versa with engineers that I have met and worked with in the past.

So being a person that believes in user centered design processes as well as having understanding in engineering principles. I think we could all better ourselves by understanding both disciplines and not just accept that there is a boundary. Designers and engineers need to get rid of this "toss over the fence" attitude to designing products. When we know how each other work and include each other in the design process you open up the chance to achieve awesomeness and enlightenment lol. I just couldn't resist doing something funny at the end as everything got a little bit too serious lol Sorry for the rant :)

Sketches

Been very busy so havnt had any free time to do some sketching. So decided to put some scribbles down the other day.

  

New Realms of Geeky Fun

Being part product designer and engineer means that I kind of have 2 sides. One, I like to sketch and love good design. The other, I love to hack things and build stuff. So having been soo good over the last couple of months with sketching whenever I've had a little bit of time I decided to balance things with a little purchase. I finally have this awesome little piece of kit and thats a Raspberry Pi!

My weakness as a designer/engineer was always the electronic side of things. As an engineer stress analysis and mechanical design is more in my comfort zone. So this is the perfect opportunity to learn some proper programming and build some seriously cool stuff. I dont know what Im going to make just yet but Im thinking I should start of with the basics first and see where I get to. 

Sketches

Chilling at the coffee shop and river side so decided to put a little something down.

Strawberry Fair and Playing the Djembe with the Hippies

I met up with a bunch of friends and went to a thing called Strawberry Fair the other day. I thought this particular event must have some large significance to strawberries because of the name but it was actually a free music and arts event. Didn't see many strawberries but there were stages with live bands and lots of stalls where people can buy food and crafts. Pretty cool... almost a festival type atmosphere.

We were walking around the fair and saw a big group of people jamming on some djembes. When I was watching I suddenly had the urge to give it a go. So when they started to wind down and prepare to start up again I quickly took an empty seat with my friends. We then made up a beat with total strangers and just went with it and it didn't turn out to badly at all.

So the drumming kept going and so I kept playing but it was now at least 10mins since we started and my hands and wrists were starting to hurt but I couldn't leave as I felt obliged to keep going and not create a scene by messing up the beat. So when it was over I was so glad as my hands at the time were red raw lol.

Sketches

I like to sketch whenever I have time. I've made it a point to continually practice so that I can get better at it. To make me do it as much as possible I usually carry a small marker pad, some fine liners and some markers. So whenever I'm sitting in a coffee shop or just chilling outside I put a little something down real quick.