A Life in Prototyping: Mechanical Engineering and User Experience
When I was 17 and thinking about what I wanted to major in when I started college in a couple months, I would sit on my computer and explore career personality tests, and all different kinds of jobs. Somehow, I ended up watching a video about the industrial design process, featuring a segment from the 60 Minutes profile of IDEO.
The excitement the designers had for their work, and the creative energy flowing in their collaborations and design sessions was eye-opening. Nobody at my parent’s workplaces did anything like that. The only job I had ever had was painting sweltering dorm rooms in the summer, and all it did was give me a good idea of what I didn’t want to do with my life. Seeing professionals inspired by their work, coming up with off-the wall solutions, and actually building them, was amazing to me. And they didn’t even have a particularly interesting topic — it’s hard to think of something more mundane to re-design than a grocery cart.
Because of that I joined the school of engineering. The first class I took was Freshman Projects, and after working on a variety of home grown design challenges, I was hooked. While the hard physical science aspect of the program was interesting in it’s own right, the core of what I loved about it was design and prototyping. We were given broad and narrow challenges, and the chaos of coming up with a design and refining it was addictive. It was fun to flex our creative muscles and solve problems, but actually making something was the most important part — there is some kind of magic in bringing something tangible to life from what started as just the seed of a thought in your head.
Since joining the IXDMA program, it’s been very interesting for me to note the similarities and divergences between the prototyping design process I learned and practiced as an engineer, and the one I’m learning now as an interaction designer.
In the abstract, big picture view, they’re very much the same. Define the problem, research solutions, prototype, test, and repeat. What I’m discovering to be the key however, is the role of human factors and considerations in the process.
Interaction design puts the human experience at the center, while I’m now realizing, engineering often shunted it off to the side, or treated it only tangentially. Often times what you were designing was simply a component in a much larger assembly, and no human was ever going to personally engage with it.
Most recently, our IXDMA class was given the challenge of combining Internet Of Things technology with backpacking/camping equipment. It was identical to many of my assignments in engineering school. However, looking at it from a slightly shifted role, my perspective ended up being quite different.
As a UX designer, we started with a persona, and moved into storyboarding for our various concepts. The focus at all times was on how the user engaged with the product, and where the potential frustrations and opportunities for emotional engagement with the product were. As an engineer, however, your assumptions about the product aren’t tested as much. The focus is much more on the technical aspects of what you’re accomplishing. An idea that has exciting technical possibilities will be pursued over something that might actually be more beneficial to the user.
As my partner and I tested our prototypes from the UX perspective, our attitudes were different as well. We simulated a variety of possibilities of our product in extremely low-fidelity, just to get an idea of how it made us feel. As an engineer, producing a high-quality deliverable was the focus — not necessarily the engagement with the user. Having a technically solid product was always more important than emotional engagement with it.
As a mechanical engineer, I designed everything from nuclear waste containers to LED light fixtures.
My job was to start with a list of technical requirements and deliverables — the technology always defined the product. This was the main reason that I came back to school for interaction design — the human element was missing. Looking back, I realized that my favorite engineering projects in school were always less focused on the technical challenges, and more focused on engagement with a human user.
So far, the IXDMA program has confirmed that for me, putting human experience at the center of the design process is what makes it compelling. Prototyping is a useful tool for a variety of products and industries, but what makes it a much more compelling and rewarding experience for the designer is when it’s wedded to the human experience.
The emotional element infuses the prototyping process with purpose — rather than being a technical challenge, the design process becomes something more like an art, with the spark of creativity and desire to excite and inspire a human using your product on the other end of the process. Chasing that spark through the prototyping process is what infuses design with the dynamic creative energy that draws so many empathetic and thoughtful people to the profession.
