Growing up, I was always surrounded by engineers, but my passion gravitated towards design and innovation. This led me to pursue a four-year undergraduate degree in product design from the National Institute of Design (NID).
After working as a designer for some time, I soon realized that for the positions I eventually wanted to be in in my career, it required a strong foundation in business skills and data analysis. To bridge this gap, I moved to the U.S. to complete an MBA in Design Strategy from California College of the Arts (CCA), followed by a Doctorate in Business Administration with concentrations in Business intelligence (BI) and data analytics.
I believe that while a designer’s mindset is crucial for problem solving, business skills are required to understand the larger picture for a profitable business, while deeper data analysis skills are essential to understand a company’s finances, resources, and timelines. Because I blend the two fields, I don’t consider myself as a purely “STEM” (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) professional, but it is a big part of what I do today.
Up until my time at Somfy, I had always been a physical product designer or product manager creating something you could physically hold in your hand. I’d say my proudest achievement was helping launch the TaHoma suite of apps. It was a big challenge to move from physical product development to app development, but it has been very rewarding.
App development is so different from physical product development. With physical product development, there are many complicated steps that consume a lot of resources, including time, budget, and personnel. Every change takes time. Every new prototype takes time, and of course, money. But with app development, you can implement immediate changes and see the result quickly. It’s a much leaner, faster process.
Lightapalooza took place in late February, and the growth of the event has mirrored the rapid ascension lighting fixtures and controls.
Problem solving is critical to enable innovation. For any project—the first step is always research—whether it’s market research, design research, or user research. You can’t make decisions without this information because it’s the foundation of everything. You have to understand what is happening in the market, why and how, and then you can answer the question, “What can we do about it?” That is always my process, no matter my title or which company I’ve worked for.
Innovation does not happen with one person—it takes a team and user involvement to understand how we can meet the market’s needs and at the same time, approach things differently than our competition. Whenever I state that some feature needs modification, it comes from teamwork with users to uncover that; it’s never coming solely from the dev team or UX designers. User input is critical to our decision process and problem-solving capabilities.
Among the biggest lessons I’ve discovered is that you should always keep learning. Read about what is happening in your industry. Know the trends and where they are going. Communicate, network, and create open dialog, whether it’s a quick chat with coworkers in the cafeteria or scheduling time with another team or department; the development team, research team, designers, tech support, marketing, engineers … or simply everybody. Sometimes your best ideas will come from open communication across departments.
Technology is constantly evolving. To stay ahead of industry trends and continue learning in my field, I read industry publications, talk to people across other areas of the industry or other industries altogether, and I maintain a large network of friends in tech and start conversations with them about what they’re seeing, noticing or hearing. I recommend asking how things are going with their team and what challenges they’re encountering. It will help you gain a broader perspective on where the industry is moving and how things are changing, whether it’s in the digital world or the physical one.
Part of my success is attributed to staying in contact with connections from college or past positions. And not just staying in contact, but nurturing those relationships. If you do this, you’ll always be learning something new. These are people that were once on the same path as you but you’ve gone different ways professionally to gain new areas of expertise, but you still have that common convergence point. These are excellent people to learn from and expand your knowledge.
It’s also important to be aware of what other companies are doing, not only in your industry but as a whole. What do they do well? What caused a product to fail? Apply those observations to your work by diving deep to understand the company’s technique or thought process and how they came to the decision to do something the way they did.
For young professionals considering a career in STEM, especially those pursuing advanced degrees, I would advise them to find hands-on projects where you can collaborate with actual clients of a company. Find a college that lets you work on real-life problems, not just hypothetical ones. You can’t read a book and sit in a classroom and expect to learn. Real-world experience is priceless, and you should seek programs that enable that ability and empower you to succeed.
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