My design education

If you’ve skimmed over the description of my background, you may be surprised to notice that I didn’t major in design back in college. I actually studied engineering. Why? Fair question.

Math and physics were my strongest subjects in high school, while art was more of a thing I filled up my electives with. I immensely enjoyed all the sculpture, ceramics, painting, and studio classes I took. But going into college, I was lured into the classic “study something useful” mentality, so I naively declared engineering as my major.

Not the worst idea ever. I was doing fine in the classes and learned a lot of neat stuff. I now have a real appreciation for how important applied mathematics and statistics are in our natural world.

Halfway through my major, I found a specialization within it called Human Factors & Cognitive Ergonomics. It dealt with the psychology of emotion and how to design products from a user-centered perspective. I jumped in headfirst.

I learned so much awesome stuff in it. How to design intuitive interfaces to reduce cognitive load, how to endear users to your products over time, how to design for the disabled and elderly, how to optimize e-commerce design, and how to practically perform statistical testing for all of these things. All these were hands-on, semester-long group projects with real clients. I feel that they are all directly applicable to any design discipline today.

I managed to shoehorn my way into some art classes towards my final couple of semesters as well. Art History, Art Foundations, and Digital Design were all a welcome break from the rigor of engineering coursework.

On the side, I was designing & coding websites for my university, doing graphic design for an on-campus magazine, and running a photography club that I co-founded.

As you can tell, it wasn’t just strictly classes and homework. I tried my best to diversify my education in as many ways as possible. And not just through art; the most interesting and paradigm-shifting class I took wasn’t engineering or design related — it was Evolutionary Ecology, a class in the Zoology department. Who would’ve thought.

Hopefully that provides better insight into my background and the strange path I took to get where I am today. I’ll write about some of my favorite classes in detail later in more blog posts.

Until next time.