1. What made you pursue a career in product design?
I liked working with my hands and building things, but also wanted something that challenged me intellectually and artistically. Product design seemed the perfect mix of the both. Other professions looked very dull at 18, and at the end of the day it was a lot of fun.

2. Where, and what, did you study?
I studied a 4 year diploma in Industrial Design at Wellington School of Design in New Zealand.

3. What did you enjoy about this course?
In 1990 the course was still a polytechnic course focused on learning through experience (it’s now a degree with more exams and less actually project work). It was a lot of hard work, but minimal exams. I really liked the studio atmosphere (which is like a consultancy atmosphere) and learning off each other.

4. What are the most important things you have learned since starting work, which you did not learn at college?
CAD skills, these are a great way of getting your foot in the door of somewhere. Cost and function – if something is too expensive, or one aspect of the design doesn’t work (or can’t be moulded) it will never be made, no matter how much you want it to or how good it looks. Often no one will solve these problems for you, so the sooner you develop an understanding of these constraints the better designer you will be and the more seriously people will take your ideas. But this is something you learn through experience, and you can’t be expected to be an expert straight out of college.

5. With hindsight, are you glad you did this course?
Yes, it got me to where I am today which in many aspects I am happy with. If I had done the degree courses offered a couple of years later I may have more skills in some areas I don’t now, but that may well have been at the loss of skills I gained through the more applied polytec course.

6. Did you manage to gain any work experience before you left college? How did you get it, and what did it teach you?
I worked at a children’s science museum designing interactive exhibits. Industrial design experience is very hard to obtain in New Zealand as there is very little manufacturing. Some of my friends managed to get placements all over the world, it was a it of a lottery. The best way was to write a letter and include a selection of your work. Follow up with a phone call to make sure people have received it.

8. Other than specific skills, what do you think makes a good designer?
An ability to understand the constraints of a problem well, while still being able to innovate within these constraints. You have to be able to understand people well, since at the end of the day they are who you are designing for. Good communication skills are a must; you are dealing with a wide range of people, some of who may be sceptical of designers at first.

9. What do you enjoy most about working in product design?
The satisfaction you get when a design is finished and you have managed to keep the original design intent intact, and most of all the work environment. Spending all day creating new things while listening to music and isn’t too bad really.

10. Are there aspects of the work you don’t enjoy?
Probably the design detailing aspects. This is when you have created the design, and then have to specify every aspect of it. Sometimes this might be over 50% of the length of a project. It can be pretty dull, but if you don’t do it correctly, your design may well come back looking very different to what you intended.

11. If you could go back in time, would you still follow a career in product design?
It’s hard to say, as the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. You are unlikely to become wealthy as product designer (unless you start a business, which involves a lot more than product design), and I realise now that other professions would have better financial rewards. A lot of the exciting developments in design and society are happening in the IT area, so I may have gone this way more than product design. Also, it helps to be based near large cities to find design jobs, so this tends to dictate where I live, which isn’t always ideal. But these same problems exist in many professions. I still enjoy design, so I would probably still follow the same career, maybe with some IT experience thrown in earlier on.

12. Which product design skills do you find you use most?
Probably CAD, just because that’s my strong point – I use it as a tool to express my ideas.

13. Which part of the design process do you enjoy most?
The initial creative stages of the design process.

14. What piece of work are you most proud of?
Probably a tricycle I designed in my final year of design school. A lot of creative ideas came together for me, I worked very hard on it, and had a lot of fun.

15. Finally... If you could give just one piece of advice to a student of product design, what would it be?
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Sometimes it is better to jump in, make a mistake and learn from it than to be too cautious. Designers (and people generally) learn through experience, so the faster you can have these experiences the faster you will learn. Also, don’t expect to get to where you want to be over-night. Keep applying yourself, and keep learning; you will get there one day. Be prepared for something different to what you imagined when you were 18; keep an open mind and look out for opportunities as they present themselves.