When I grew up, I was always surrounded by engineers, but my passion exploited design and innovation. This led me to complete a four-year bachelor's degree in product design from the National Institute of Design (NID).
After working as a designer for some time, I soon found that I required a strong basis for the skills and data analysis for companies for the positions in my career. To close this gap, I moved to the USA to complete an MBA in design strategy from the California College of the Arts (CCA), followed by a doctorate in business administration with concentrations in business intelligence (BI) and data analyzes.
I believe that the setting of a designer is of crucial importance for the problem solving, but business skills are necessary to understand the larger picture for a profitable company, while deeper skills for data analysis are important to understand the finances, resources and schedules of a company. Since I mixed the two fields, I do not consider myself a purely “stem” (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), but it is a large part of what I do today.
Starting in the background of product development
Until my time at Somfy, I was always a physical product designer or product manager who created something that they could physically hold in hand. I would say my proudest performance was to start the Tahoma Suite of Apps. It was a big challenge to switch from the development of physical products to the app development, but it was very rewarding.
The app development differs from the development of physical products. When developing physical products, there are many complicated steps that consume many resources, including time, budget and personnel. Every change takes time. Every new prototype takes time and of course money. With the app development, however, you can implement immediate changes and see the result quickly. It is a much slimmer, faster process.
Covering of the research force
Problem solving is crucial to enable innovation. For every project – the first step is always research – whether market research, design research or user research. You cannot make decisions without this information, as this is the basis for everything. You have to understand what happens on the market, why and how, and then you can: “What can we do about it?” This is always my process, regardless of my title or for which company I have worked for.
Innovation does not take place with one person – a team and a user participation take in to understand how we meet the needs of the market and at the same time approach things differently than our competition. Whenever I find that some functions have to be changed, teamwork comes with users to uncover this. It never only comes from the development team or UX designer. User inputs are crucial for our decision -making process and our functional functions.
Constant lessons in stem learning
One of the largest lessons I have discovered is that they should keep learning. Read what happens in your industry. Know the trends and where to go. Communicating, networking and creating open dialogue, regardless of whether it is a short chat with employees in the cafeteria or with another team or another department. The development team, the research team, designer, technical support, marketing, engineers … or simply all. Sometimes their best ideas come from open communication between the departments.
The technology continues to develop. In order to be ahead of the industry trends and learn in my area, I read industry publications, speak to people in other areas of the industry or other industries and maintained a large network of friends in technology and start discussions with them about what they see, notice or hear. I recommend asking how things are going with your team and what challenges they meet. It will help you get a broader perspective where the industry moves and how things change, be it in the digital world or in physical.
Part of my success is due to the fact that they remain in contact with connections from college or earlier positions. And not just stay in touch, but promote these relationships. If you do this, you will always learn something new. These are people who were once in the same way as they were, but they have become professionally different to get new specialist areas, but they still have this common convergence point. These are excellent people from whom they can learn and expand their knowledge.
It is also important to be aware of what other companies do, not only in your industry, but overall. What are you doing well? What led to a product failed? Apply these observations to your work by diving deeply to understand the technology or the process of thinking of the company and how to decide to do something as you did.
Advice for stem professionals
For young specialists who consider a career in MINT, especially those who pursue advanced degrees, I advise you to find practical projects where you can work with the actual customers of a company. Find a college where you can work on problems in real life, not just on hypothetical. You cannot read a book and sit and learn in a classroom. Experience in the real world is invaluable and you should seek programs that make it possible to enable and enable them.
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