When I was a kid, I drew robots, cars, airplanes, and sneakers. When I wasn't doing that, I was tearing things apart and putting them back together into something else. "You should be an engineer", my dad (a civil engineer) said to me. Even though I went to school for industrial design, I've been tearing design and engineering apart to create something else ever since.
Early in my career, I gained a fluency in traditional high-volume plastic manufacturing processes and a genuine appreciation for the imperatives and success of my engineering, product management, and marketing colleagues. I found that by expanding my role as a designer to be an active integrator of their goals, they reciprocated - creating a thoughtful user experience and designing a beautiful product became a shared goal. Concurrently, collaboration, product efficiency, and employee satisfaction all improved while product development and bill of material costs came down. Thus, the General Motors Underhood Design Studio, my first experience building a new design team and process at a Fortune 50 company, was born.
Years later I would be given a second opportunity to build a new design team at another Fortune 50 company. The Comcast Global Industrial Design team was founded in 2013 upon many of the same principles as before. This time, though, I played a large role in developing the product development process internal to Comcast and with suppliers and factory teams for bringing the company's set top boxes, voice remotes, internet gateways, and smart home products to market. United by the purpose to "Make the world a better place" we centered user experience, simplicity, accessibility, sustainability, and circular design to earn the trust of our customers and a lot of recognition from the press and the international design community!
Today, I spend my time teaching and volunteering - I like to think of it as designing the next generation of problem solvers and 3D creators. I'm always on the lookout to work with companies and clients who share my values. Turns out, I'm happiest when I'm helping people, teams, and products reach their potential.
