Starting my design thinking career: Bread & butter

That butter is me. That bread is my career.

It has been about 3 months since I started working at a design and business consultancy in Toronto. It has been quite a steep learning curve, and the journey is only getting steeper.

I feel like I came out of design school as a large glob of butter filled with fundamental design skills and a mild preconception of what design thinking and research is. This understanding of design I graduated with is being spread thin across this slice of bread, which is my career in design thinking and strategy. To go on with this nice metaphor, I am spreading the design process to help dismantle and reconstruct highly complex problems that involve a variety of stakeholders and targeted audience. Designing the aesthetic of each project is of course important, but that only feels like 10% of what I do now. I’m not upset about that at all. In fact, I think I have found the right place because I’m getting really excited to see how design is growing across multiple disciplines.

A part of me still wonders what would have happened if I started my career in a more traditional design studio, but those thoughts are occurring less as I enjoy what I do more.

Everyday I’m learning something new about complex problems, ways of thinking, ways of communicating, and basically everything that makes me realize how much I don’t know about what design can do. I want to keep searching until I reach the limits of where design processes can fit into. I’ve taken my first step into this search, and I don’t plan on leaving it any time soon.