Students Who Design: A Retrospective
Some thoughts concerning my first big project
After almost a year of production and over three months of episode releases, Students Who Design is about to ship the final episode of the series.
This is crazy to me.
This project has been the primary recipient of my time and energy since late February of 2017. My skills have mainly to do with everything behind the camera, so my role on the series is not a highly visible one; I primarily worked as a writer and producer. It was an amazing learning experience that required a lot of creative and logistical acrobatics; as a two-person team, it was easy to feel understaffed and overwhelmed, that we had bitten off more than we could chew. However, it seems that we have made it to the end. My strongest identity tie is to my work, so I am incredibly proud to have taken this scrappy, raw project from genesis to launch while still in school.
Now I’d like to say a few thank yous
First off, I’d like to thank Dyson at Cornell. Without the S2 Scholars Program grant we received, this project would not have been possible. Thank you to Nancy for bearing with our often scattered documentation and for being such a great touchpoint.
Second, thank you to Facebook Design, our second sponsor. You guys provided outreach expertise that seriously helped us get our product to those who would make the most use of it.
Third, big thanks to Suraj Reddy for being a phenomenal road trip partner. For those who did not get a chance to watch our vlog, Suraj helped drive, joke around, and have a blast with us on the five-day trip over which we knocked out 10 of our interviews. He also was incredibly curious and eager to learn about design, and I commend him deeply for that.
Fourth, thank you to all the talented student designers who agreed to interview with us. Obviously, this podcast would not have the impact that it does without all you rockstars.
Which brings me to my final thank you.
You know him as the host of the show. I know him as a great personal friend.
I’ve known Sahil Khoja for the better part of two years now. I met him at eHub, one of Cornell’s communal learning spaces, and we had a long conversation as we worked on our respective class assignments. For the next few months, I knew him as the guy with the Allbirds who was freaky passionate about design.
In the middle of our sophomore spring, Sahil approached me with an idea of collaborating on a project. He had received a grant (aforementioned), and he needed somebody to do media production and help out with logistics. My primary creative outlet is photography, a relatively common hobby at Cornell, so I was flattered that he landed on me as his choice for producer.
Over the next few months, Students Who Design started to take shape. We started to mock up a basic framework, but our sophomore year of college had come to an end, and we were forced to opposite sides of the country for our summer internships (he to NYC for product design at Facebook, I to Palo Alto for product management at HP). This put a slight damper on progress, but we conferenced frequently, mapped out an execution timeline, and even managed to pull off recording a few interviews. It was this ability to execute despite our distance that made me realize how powerful and productive one can be with a bit of focus and intrinsic motivation. Plus, it certainly helped to have such a knockout project partner by my side! We hit the ground running at the beginning of junior year, and the rest is history.
It is now almost eight months later, and with all interviews recorded, all editing done, all marketing and outreach executed, and 15 episodes shipped, our final episode of the season releases later today. I hosted this last one, and I hope you all enjoy learning about Sahil’s design journey as much as I have enjoyed working with him and learning through him. Sahil, you’re the man, and I would not have wanted to do this with anyone else.
Alright, this post is already sufficiently long-winded and self-congratulatory, so I will leave you aspiring designers with this: every episode of Students Who Design holds a wealth of knowledge from someone who has been in your shoes. Pay attention to what is said, and try to incorporate at least one new idea per episode into your approach to design. I hope everyone has enjoyed the series, and I will see you all in Season Two!
PEACE!
