With each passing year, I feel like we are coming closer to the brink of catastrophe. I don't like to sound apocalyptic, but everywhere I look I see that so little has changed in our consumerist, capitalist culture - the complete paradigm shift that we really need is not coming quickly enough. It's so hard to change one's ways, especially habits entrenched so deeply in society since the dawn of the industrial revolution. You could say industrial designers are the ones who got us into this mess, so now it's their responsibility to get us out of it. And I'm going to be part of that responsibility.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I chose to major in ID. I knew that I liked to draw things (especially things in perspective!), and I knew I loved to build stuff (especially with Legos!). That was about it. I was still obsessed with video games and I wanted to design the next iPod. But some things, inside and outside of my control, began to influence my design thinking once I delved deeper into RISD life and culture.
The foremost life change was my health. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes about a month before coming to RISD for freshman year. Needless to say, it didn't make the transition to college particularly easy. But it wasn't exactly the illness itself that got my design wheels turning - it was a related treatment. For all of freshman year, I used a testing kit and syringe injections of insulin (all of which were industrial design products, although I did not think of them this way at the time). Then, at the beginning of sophomore year, I switched to using an insulin pump, which freed my life up a bit. Gone were the multiple injections per day, and all my insulin was in a single object. The system wasn't without its problems, but the fact that the pump resembled an iPod caused me to really connect it to industrial design. So I thought, "why not turn lemons into lemonade? I have this disease, and I'm managing it fairly well, but now that I can be an industrial designer, I could have the power to influence how I and others manage it too."
Discovering the world of medical design caused me to realize that a career in ID could be influential - I could really help better people's lives. I could do more than make things pretty or functional. I made a sort of promise to myself - that I would strive to use class assignments in a productive way. In Design Principles, I redesigned a blood sample container. For my CAD I class, I redesigned the insulin pump. By the end of sophomore year, I knew exactly where I wanted to go in ID.
But currents began to pull me in many different directions. My interest in photography sparked up again after taking an amazing photo class during wintersession. I began to play the piano, and sing more. Over the summer, my interest in graphic and web design resurfaced. Back at school, I became involved with RISD's Second Life Recycling Center, which invigorated my environmental consciousness. Surrounded by the green thinking there, and also in the ID classrooms, I was inspired to focus my projects on both medical and environmental issues. The project I'm working on in Service Design revolves around refilling product containers (things like laundry detergent, toothpaste, and pens) instead of throwing them away.
How little I knew when I first got here. And, paradoxically, the more I learn, the less I know. The world has become a daunting, hostile place to me, filled with greedy capitalist companies, greedy consumers (often myself included), oppressed people as a result, and overpopulation, among pollution and the accelerating destruction of our planet. Whew! Still, I believe that each little bit can make a difference. I maintain the hope that if each of us does something, no matter how small, to help improve our situation, then we can change this industry for the better. Whatever I do with my life's work, I want it to mean something to someone; I want to help improve the human condition.
I may still not know exactly where this career will take me, but then again, I am still discovering industrial design. I've been discovering it my whole life, even if I wasn't aware of it. Through this blog and this class, I've discovered its past and present. And I will continue to discover it for my whole life, as the world changes. One thing I'm sure of: I intend to have a voice in that change.
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