What better way to celebrate National Industrial Design Day than by sharing our passion for our profession with the next generation? That’s exactly what the SF team did this Friday afternoon when they welcomed a curious group of Scouts into the studio for an action-packed, hands-on introduction to what Industrial Designers do, and the Industrial Design Process.

So few children (let alone adults) are even aware of the Industrial Design profession and how pervasive an impact it has on our daily lives. It touches almost everything – from any of the objects, big and small, that enable our everyday lives, to overarching services, systems, and even paradigms that affect how we experience life. As we showed these kids the realities of what our daily work looks like in an industrial design consultancy, we could see their eyes light up. For these kids, realizing that their love of drawing, making things, or of thinking creatively can be applied directly to creating objects, products and experiences that will improve people’s daily lives is an epiphany that many of us Industrial Designers only wish we could have had at their age.

When talking to a troop of a dozen 10-year-olds, fast-paced and experiential learning is the order of the day, so it’s a good thing that the life of an industrial design consultancy is nothing if not those two things. It was perfectly natural and lots of fun to adapt the tour of our studio to these kids so eager to learn.

The tour started at the first step in the design process: asking questions to figure out what we don’t know yet and what we need to find out. The Scouts had a chance to ask any questions they had about Industrial Design, listing them on the whiteboard before going through the studio to understand what Industrial Design is. (By the way, if you want to learn more about what industrial design is, click here.) Then we moved on to the next step in the design process – Design Research. We talked about why Design Research is essential to creating great products that are sought-after by their users, and showed these wide-eyed pupils how we execute design research in our own dedicated focus group facility with its one-way mirror and observation room behind. (To learn more about Design Research, click here.)

Then we moved on, showing examples of initial concept ideation, 2D and 3D rough sketches, and lo-fidelity models used to test how users will use and misuse a product, and to make adjustments and improvements. Then we took the kids into our open architecture studio where they watched spellbound as Josiah, our Lead Transportation Designer, did a sketch demo and made a beautiful truck materializ on the blank page before their eyes.

Next they got to watch Matt, one of our Industrial Designers, demonstrate digital rendering and illustration on his Cintiq, and Dan, our Product Design Manager, showed an example of a graphic user interface prototype. The last stop was our model-making and prototyping shop where the troop got to see our paint booth and learn about 3D printing processes and more.

By the end of the tour, the group of Scouts were on fire about Industrial Design, each wanting to know how they could also perform the magic they had seen of creating something seemingly from nothing. The passion and wonder of young people like these Scouts is always contagious and remind us of why we love being Industrial Designers. This ability to use our creative gifts to make products for the benefit of humanity is what fuels us every day. Some of these young people may someday choose a worthy profession other than Industrial Design, but for others, this was their first exposure to what will become their life’s work one day. This passion is why we do what we do, and is one of the most important parts of celebrating Industrial Design!

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