There are two kinds of architect: the ones who design the buildings we live and work in, and the ones who design the digital world. The ones who ensure the products, programs, and websites that we use to buy our shopping or book our travel or manage our health actually work.
Aleshia Eckard, however, is both.
“My education is in architecture — I started in Brooklyn, New York, and I carried that down to Atlanta,” Aleshia explains. “I decided to make a career change — I looked at architecture and realized my interest was around solutions: people need a building because they need something they don’t already have. I then got interested in energy management — red-lining electrical drawings — and how that linked to data in a database.”
Aleshia isn’t shy about her love of getting her hands dirty in the process of problem-solving, and it’s clear she naturally translates her real-world design experience into designing for the internet.
Excelling as an in-betweener
Far from feeling stuck between those who need a solution and those who build the code, Aleshia thrives on the potential for design that’s offered by her role. “You have people on one end — the business users that have a problem to solve. Then you have the people on the very other end of the spectrum who are the developers,” she says.
“It’s the in-between that I find myself in, and it’s the in-between where the creativity is found, because this person has to be able to become a liaison between a true IT development team that executes exactly like they’re asked to, and the individuals who don’t fully understand how to solve the problem. That’s where creativity happens.”
Aleshia sees herself and her fellow ‘in-between’ designers as creators. She explains: “If you have a problem, the solution is most likely not already available, so the people in the middle have to figure out, given the tools that they have, and the technology that their teams are able to use, how can they stitch together this new solution.”
And for any designer, the feedback from the person who’s asked for the solution is invigorating. “My favorite part of my job is, almost at the end of a project, where you show your first version, and you get to see that reaction — either really happy or really not — it tells you quickly if you’ve nailed it or if you’re on the right path, or if you need to alter something.”
You’d think that having something you’ve created picked apart would be a painful process, but not for Aleshia. The beauty for her is in creating something useful — her approach to architecting digital products is a lot more human than the title affords it.
“Anything I’m creating means that I’m saving someone time, I’m giving them some sort of relief — that’s a big thing that drives me. It might be saving a team member one hour a day or saving me an hour of my day; it’s all about getting to that work-life balance.”
Aleshia Eckard is a Digital Excellence Architect for Siemens, USA. She lives in East Atlanta Village with her girlfriend and three dogs. Find out more about working at Siemens.
Photography: Fernando Decillis
Illustration: Charlotte Trounce; Angelica Lena
Video: David Parker
Animation: Sentiospace
