CAREER:

Age: 31
Occupation: Industrial Designer and Researcher
Company: Teague
Length at position: 1 year
Hours worked per week: 42-50 hours
Salary:  $18,000 - $65,000 per year
Best part of job:
I think I’m lucky because I was able to find a job in a company that has lots of experience and it is empowering to have many mentors around. It’s difficult to find work in design because it’s competitive. Although I loved drawing and making art, I didn't find that I had a strong reason to do it, thus designing for a particular end user or reason made a lot of sense to me, and I decided to pursue industrial design. I chose to do this because I loved it. There is nothing I would rather do than this line of work.
Finding a job was really difficult and discouraging. The workplace consists of you selling your ideas. The designer must educate the client about how to use design to make products more joyful to use, more beautiful and in the end, more profitable for the client's company. This job is different because I faced real constraints such as budgets, costs, and other regulations. I didn’t have much passion on other jobs before this one.

EDUCATION:

Degree(s
Bachelor Program of Design at Emily Carr. I took a 4 year Industrial Design Program.
School: Emily Carr. Before that, I was in Spokane Community College in Washington.

Advice:
Designers should always put the user at the center of the design process. What makes good design is simplicity and comprehension. Good designers solve problems. Every job in industrial design is different. Once you understand that, your prospects of getting employed get higher. The program helped me find my own way of designing and my own approach to things. Always question why and how things are done; problem-solving is key to being a good designer.

LIFESTYLE:

Favourite activity: Hiking, cooking, swimming
Upcoming vacation plans: New York for Christmas. Also, I will attend the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum's Design Triennial.
In five years, I see myself : Working on projects outside of work, preferably one that helps people overseas.