Ben Arent | Interaction Designer
I found this book in the
The book finishes with review from top designs, Paul Smith, Jason Kirk, Karmin Rashid, Neville Brody and Pier Roberts.
Personally I found that I learnt most of these lessons the hard way on my placement, this is an easy and quick read for all design and Product design undergraduates.
Price: £10.50 GBP
I have just completed my years (10 months) work placement at Resolute, an arcertical lighting design firm. The work placement was part of degree which is 4 year sandwich. This just means that I work for a year before my last year, I would recommend this to all undergrdautes as you are going to have to end out working eventily, a work placemnet will give you an option to see what the industry is really like, and what your strenghts are.
At Resolute I had a rought 3 phase workplan, this consited of.
Assemblery.
Glass Ready to be cold worked.
Resolute Assemberly Line.
To all of Resolutes products see Resolutes Website
Many thanks to Doug Varey for employing me, Max Mosley for letting my Crash in his basement, Andrew Elliot for helping get over the imperial mesurement system, Kent for showing me how to run a J(about)IT assemberly line, Holy for selling the stuff and keeping things rolling and real, Jannet for being friendly and smiling, Yang and Steven for being Bad ass assemblery workers, Tommy for putting up with my bad QC standards. Mie for being patient with my Ardent Questions, Jessica for feeding me Henersy, Drew from Slipstrem design for showing me his design office, and a huge thanks to everyone else I worked with! Hopfully see you in the future at some point.
Thoughtless Acts: BBQ Wheel Barrow.
Inspired by the Book from IDEO, This is a great product solution with not for it purpose products.
Here are my two entry’s for Design21 social Design competition. These were very rushed entry’s, and aren’t polished ideas. I entered two competitions one about designing an emergency shelter and one for a toy product.
The internet is a great resource for finding out news, but sometimes its nice to have the information in your hand. These are my top ten magazines for product designers to read. (and top 5 to not!)
Design Week
I.D.
This is a personal design project taking the facebook platform and making a phone around it. Building on a already successful interface. dub contains some great features such as a split braille input, and a real time RFID based crowd search. “getting laid, was never so easy”.
Please post your comments and suggestions here.
There is some existing stuff that I’m currently working on, a product called ‘the dub’, and various other design projects.
I’m currently migrating this site to a new web host that will allow me run more video and allow for larger files on this site. I will be trying to update the blog with a ‘usfull’ post once a month. There will be a ‘services for hire’ section on my website that will allow anyone to give me some freelance love.
UPDATE: Site is now on new Server. benarent is now on Dreamhost. This will mean that I will be able to upload videos, and be able to push a lot more content over my site.
Hey,
Just a quick thank you, for checking out my site. Its been very interesting to the linking work. It started when I finally updated my Corfolot Portfolio, which in 3 days was linked by various design sites, then linked by Engadget. Which is amazing for me! As a avaid Engadget reader.
I would like to appolgise, for the lack of content and bad grammer on the site. It isn’t in its finsihed state. I am working on lot of new design projects at the moment and will be constantly updating my site.
I’m currently seeking a company to sponser me, so if you own a company and have a design project that needs working on, or would like a creative twist on a product from your boring business. Please get in touch. info@benarent.co.uk
I recently found that I was getting Google Hits trying to find out how to become a product desiger (Typ-Os Can be great in SEO). After looking online I saw that there isn’t really much advise out there to Students, or Anyone on What you have to do to become a Product Designer. So I will try summarize what I know in this post.
Step 1: Are you sure you want to design products?
I currently find that most BA product design students drop out of there first year of there degree because of the assumption that design is ‘an easy degree’. I am not sure where this idea comes from, but I think its because you are a “jack of all trades, master of none” that you can get away with being bad at lots of things. This isn’t really true, in reality you have to know about business, marketing, sales, engernering, material science, Art Design, Mechatronics, Electronics, Human factors, manufacturing, user experience, and a whole load of other stuff.
The definition of Product Designer is always changing, but basically we are “consumer bonder, we connect with engineers and consumers to create useful and well thought out products and services”
Step 2: Go to School.
There are many arguments about what the best product design school is. Most people will save Brunel, Loughborough, Bournemouth, Newcastle (Just because Jonathon Ive went there) and Middlsex. These are all great schools, and in the future I will hopefully plan to break down what each one has to offer. But in the end of the day you need to visit, meet the lectures, and make sure that the syllabusss is being cons tally updated.
Step 3: Read, Visit, Geekout, Sketch, Absorb
the commen is conception is that its all about doing stuff, pratical stuff, as the literate would say. The truth is that as product design covers such a large range of subjects you have to read about design, design history, new design movements, design blogs and stay constanyl up to date in this rapidly chanign filed.
You will also have to become a geek, these are the programs that I know very well.
> Photoshop
> Illustataor
> Flash
> After Effects
> Premier Pro
> InDesign
> AutoCad
> Solidworks
> Alias StudioTools
> Excel (Maths and Calcuations are very important)
> Web Skills (Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, ASP, PHP, Flash)
What you also have to remember these are ONLY TOOLS, the first and most powefull tool is you pencil / pen, It is rare that I ever fire up and computer tool, without firing up my pencil / pen first. I would recommend saying that if you can’t think of idea on paper, you won’t be able to put it into CAD. There is nothing wrong with just being a CAD monkey and tackling problems in 3D space, you can even do 3D product design, that is all about CAD work. But keep in mind, you will be the CAD monkey, and not neciscaily working on your own ideas, which may suite you down to the ground.
Step 4: Get experience
Try to get a degree that offers a years work experience. I’m currently working at a lighitng design firm in Seattle, it is not only a great chance to work and actually get to make real stuff you get a good chance to develop your skills for your last year design project. It has given me the chance to further develop my portfolio, improve my reading and general design thinking.
If you can’t get a placement try to do as many design competitions as you can, jsut keep cranking them out. Even if you enter half finished bits of work, the experience will be great as this sort of rushed product is the bread and butter of most design consultancies.
While your a student i would recommend giving up your part time job, and just geeking out and learning the above programs. If and when you do need beer money try to get a job that will help with your career or at least give you more skills to expand your design business thinking. Its surprising how much you can learn about consumers working on the blunt end of sales, or about luxury products by working as silver service waiter.
Step 5: Get contacts.
Keep on networking, start small and just merge well with your class mates. You will learn the What?, Why?, When? from your lectures but you will find that pier group will teach you the ‘how’.
Look at everyone as a opportunity, everyone is a specialist in something. Reflect upon your own family, you might think that you have the most boring, bland family. The truth is, this is what the most of the population are like. These are “the consumers”, observe, ask and design for these people. These are the people who ultimately buy your products. Design for the people, the boring people.
> Get a Corflot profile, and a CarbonMade. These drive a lot of traffic to my site.
Step 6: Get a Job
So know you have finished University, you need to get a job now. I don’t really know what to recommend as I’m still a student. Just remember the best jobs are never advertised, use your network, publish online, do spec work, and just shamelessly self promote. Good work will always show its self, the job will follow your work.
Step 7: Make your Own Job. Freelance or you own Business.
Still no Job, Perhaps you just suck at being a product designer. (this is more than likly true) If so, go back, read, experience, observe and connect with manufactures to start creating real products, for example do you ever notice how few “real stuff” is on Corfolot. The is currently a huge problem between being able to design and manufacture.
If all fails and you can’t get a job, I would say just go at it alone. Start working with materials, designs and company’s. Sell yourself and your unquire design thinking. Remember your thinking process is unquire in the world, and many company’s just desing bad products because no one has ever challenged them.
Go forth wannabe designer, challenge the giants.
<Update> If you are comming from Treehugger, you can view a better overview of the energy tree in my portfolio. The bellow, is work that I would like to do on the interaction design for the 1 of the energy meters that will be in UK homes.
After reading that every house in the UK is going to get an energy meter. I applied my design thinking and have come up with this quick solution. It isn’t as ‘out there’ as the Energy Tree, but it uses exsiting system to create a device that used less energy.
I would like to see the following
> Standardization for new builds, A set of standards and standard meter. So various companies can build on an existing architecture.
> Integration with devices, If it doesn’t need a interface don’t give it one. A great integration would be with be putting the user interface on a mobile phone, more than powerful enough to control and always with you display.
> A easy way to adapt product device control. Such as home automation and being able to turn off devices. its good enough to see energy outcome, but BETTER if there is statistical analysis, and areas where you know what you can turn off.
By using exsiting technologys such as you house hold router, mobile phone, TV and computer. The user can get a much richer user experaince. The question is, who would work on this? And How would they make there money.
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