"Things are going digital"

wow, super interesting, if you have a second could you elaborate? I find this fascinating.

Is now a good time to remind everyone to go watch Ready Player One in a week?

Loved that book… lots of designed objects (even if they are digital :slight_smile: )

I graduated in 2011 and everyone was saying that there would be a huge shift towards UX. Much like manufacturing, all ID jobs were going to be shipped out to China in the next 5-10 years. Looking back, this statement was completely ridiculous and I don’t know how that guy could say that. Think about how difficult it is to communicate with overseas manufacturers regarding measurable things like tolerances and part quality. Then multiply that by the fact that ID uses a lot of subjective/trend-based/soft skills and it would just be a total nightmare.

While it is true that the UX field has grown exponentially in the last few years, it is certainly not true that ID is failing in any way.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, industrial design is set to grow about 3-4% year over year. That is considered slow growth. Just for some context, the average rate of growth is 4-7% in any given field. Fields like journalism are SHRINKING by about 10-15% per year, and fields like software engineering are growing at a staggering 15-20% per year.

I think that if you’re a recent ID graduate, things are not as easy as they have been in the last 10-15 years…but to be fair, for as long as I’ve known about the field, industrial design has never been very easy to break into. Even some very talented designer friends in my graduating class were not able to break into the field of ID. But they did end up becoming very good UX designers, and they probably make more money than most of us too (generally, UX pays about 20% more than ID).

Just like anything else, if you strive to create the highest quality of work, people will want to hire you. I constantly try to stay up to date on my skills in order to remain relevant in the field. When I first graduated, I struggled to find work. Over time as I built up my skills, network, and portfolio, things have gotten much easier.

Industrial design will always be a profession for as long as we still exist in our physical bodies.

Much like manufacturing, all ID jobs were going to be shipped out to China in the next 5-10 years. Looking back, this statement was completely ridiculous and I don’t know how that guy could say that. Think about how difficult it is to communicate with overseas manufacturers regarding measurable things like tolerances and part quality.

I will comment on this line, again not because all jobs were outsourced - but for companies which manufacture in Asia, it’s MUCH easier to hire an overseas ID team to handle design and direct connection with the manufacturers. At my last job our ID team & ME team saw no growth (or a small decline) in our US or European studios over the past decade, but began hiring additional resources in Asia to help do the jobs which usually required designers getting on a plane and spending 3 weeks in China. It was easier to pay a lower salary for an additional employee overseas then it was to spend huge amounts of money on overseas travel.

Only a single example, but certainly not a ridiculous standpoint, especially given the cost and availability of ID labor in Asia. It also became tougher to argue the quality of overseas design, since for every 100 mediocre designers overseas there were still some great designers that you could track down.

another thing I’ve been hearing for 20 years :slight_smile:

Last time I was there I did check in on 2 factory design center and had them pitch original concepts to me… the studios were very nice, but the design work was not in these two cases. Everything was a knock off of something else. They even pitched a knock of a product I had designed, and 3 knock offs of competitor’s product. They didn’t seem to understand that even if we felt like that design was a good brand fit, and that implementing a 3 year old design was acceptable to the marketplace, we would likely legally be in trouble. That said, the design talent is improving, but a brand that would rather do everything on the cheap and want to deal with sifting through all of that would be a good client fit for me. Plenty of work to go around in ID from my experience, it is just a matter of finding the right fits.

Agreed that certainly was not where our “innovation” projects came in, but for things like accessories, lower tier products (which grafted features from the higher end products) it was a big growth area for us. Not every charger needed a principal/senior ID leading it.

As things go more global, inevitably certain jobs will be outsourced. My instructor, however, was saying that ALL (or most) ID jobs would be sent overseas within 10 years. That was in 2010.

Sounds like an instructor who had a hard time getting a job. If he believed all of the ID jobs were going overseas, how could he ethically feel good about educating a crop of new designers in the US?

It’s no different to being a lecturer knowing full well that, as mentioned above, only around a 3rd of students who graduate the course will get an ID specific job.

I think there is a fundamental ethical difference.

In the situation you pointed out, 2/3 of design students might not get a job based on their abilities (and connections, but for purposes of this argument let’s classify that as a kind of ability. Also other schools have much higher placement rates and still others have much lower, so for simplicity let’s stick with 2/3rds). In this situation the professor knows that not all students will get jobs but does his or her best to prepare those paying students hoping that the top 33% will get placement.

In the first stituation the instructor believed “all jobs” were going overseas, so 0% of students would have jobs no matter their level of ability. In effect that professor his selling something he believes to be faulty. I. This situation the instructor takes money believing that how well or poorly the students are prepared that they won’t have jobs (an untrue presumption, but this is the belief of the instructor)…Thus very different from an ethics standpoint in my viewing.

Both viewpoints are not uncommon. Having taught as an adjunct off and on, and done plenty of guest lectures and critiques at schools, I’ve run into both kinds of instructors often. The first group tends to double down and try their best to prepare students, the second tend to phone it and let their personal defeat become their students’ defeat.

95% of how a student does at degree level is based on their natural ability and dedication to learning and getting things done. That is generally accepted fact in pedagogy. Doubling down and trying harder would never take that 2/3rds (a rough average that would be accurate in the UK) to significantly less.
Also that lecturer’s comment left open the option to both moving abroad and 7 years of employment so they are arguably different.

Guys, don’t forget: Even if you don’t end up doing industrial design as your profession, a lot of the skills and thinking can be applied to other fields. So even if some or most of your students don’t end up practicing industrial design professionally, they still are learning something that has value. I think that’s probably what the professor in question here was thinking. He’s actually a pretty well-established designer. He just was wrong on this particular thing.

I think as our digital world grows so everyone could rise to the top , Everyone need to be clear that mobile is the future of everything.You need to understand your business processes and models and clearly identify where there is the most friction and what’s the most painful part of your business.Digital is happening everywhere. It’s a tsunami where the wind seems to be blowing slowly, but at any point there could be a gale that blows everything sideways immediately.The important thing is not to get overwhelmed by the scope of digital transformation. Innovation is easier than ever to integrate into existing businesses in a modular, open fashion that scales across platforms and with existing partners and systems. We know that digital transformation is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but we have now learned how to package up innovation to make those transformations accessible, well-supported, and easily read.

Puri Aanand Vilas
website: http://www.puriaanandvillas.com/

The “these jobs could move overseas” argument could be made for pretty much any job that doesn’t require daily one-on-one interaction such as the service industry (Restaurants, parcel delivery, etc.).

Also, I googled “is X a dying career?” and pretty much everything I typed in had someone arguing it was dying, including programming :laughing: .

Yeah, thing are really going digital. I mean, guys, even the money :slight_smile: look at this cryptocurrence histeria. I’ve read an article that some people already have created the tecnology that allows us to buy real estate for bitcoins. it’s so cool tho. Future is here :slight_smile:)) We definetely need to concentrate on the digital side of all our working skills. Also - i really like that fact that in the digital world we can work for any client in any country in the world without going out of the house.

This is an article that relates to some of the discussion in this thread. Personally, I’m always hugely skeptical of one line statements around technology. It’s such a complex area.

That was a nice, easy read, thanks! I really like this quote “Most importantly, just because a particular technology is “better” in some way doesn’t guarantee it will be widely adopted, or that it will cause other, more popular technologies to improve.
In reality, technological advances are a lot like evolution in the biological world: there are all kinds of dead-ends or regressions or uneven tradeoffs along the way, even if we see broad progress over time.” This is so true and often forgotten, media makes it seem as if every tech (which is usually way more under-developed and far out than they think) is right around the corner and that the entire world will embrace it.

Check it AVClub…

Ahhh! Interesting… I have considered getting the Punkt Phone and “disconnecting” but I don’t believe it is available in my area.