Designing in the Wild: The Industrial Design Podcast
Designing in the Wild is the podcast where industrial designers, inventors, and changemakers reveal how they turn messy, real-world constraints into market-ready solutions. Each episode unpacks the mindsets, methods, and aha-moments behind sustainable innovation—whether it’s re-thinking plastics, hacking circular supply chains, or simply sketching faster under pressure. If you’re passionate about design’s role in a resilient future (and can’t resist a good behind-the-scenes story), this is your campfire.
“Real-world design stories for a world that needs better ones.”
Designing in the Wild: The Industrial Design Podcast
#004: Why We Need to Be Tinkering More: Industrial Designer Jorge Paricio - Open-Ended Exploration, Sketching and Ideation, Material Knowledge, Confirmation Bias, and Getting Out To Talk With End Users.
Jorge Paricio - We talk, self-discovery through exploring, failing, and experimenting more! Being a mentor, and being mentored. How to start your own tinker shop, Human factors, Why 200 sketches are better than 2 polished renderings, Speaking with end-users in order to make a better product, Confirmation Bias, The evolution of Industrial Design, and Tools for the trade.
Jorge is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut. He's taught as a full time teacher at the Art Institute of Colorado, for 6 years, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Online Division, and was Senior guest critic at the Rhode Island School of Design for 14 years. He's also designed products for Colgate-Palmolive, and continues to be mentor for industrial design students at UCONN and beyond.
www.theidrender.com
www.renderinginteriors.com
Books
1. Hybrid drawing techniques for interior design, Routledge. (https://amzn.to/3KxQpMt)
2. Perspective Sketching, Freehand and Digital Drawing Techniques for Artists and Designers, Rockport. (https://amzn.to/3FWEFPV)
3. Ungrading, Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do instead), by Susan D. Blum. (https://amzn.to/3nPQLEw)
4. Sketching by Koos Eissen and Roselien Steur, and Sketching The Basics
5. Design Sketching by Erik Olofsson and Klara Sjolen. How to Render:the fundamentals of light, shadow and reflectivity.
My point is, sometimes we are so framed to think within the parameters of the particular project in class that we are doing that we forget that there is the whole outdoors. You have to, your teachers, your good teachers have to push you to get out and practice eliciting information from end users. Not any users, but end users, people that use these particular products day in and day
SPEAKER_01:out. Hey guys, what is up, design community? This is Rob Irwin speaking with Jorge Parisio today, and you are listening to Designing in the Wild, where industrial designers and creatives come together like to level up. So I am super excited today to have Jorge here today with us to chat. Full disclosure, he and I have a bit of history. He actually was a professor of mine back at the Art Institute of Colorado, and he has since traveled quite a bit from his teachings, and he'll give us a little background on that. We'll chat about that later, but Thanks so much Jorge for joining us. Super excited that you're here today.
SPEAKER_00:I'm an industrial designer, that's why I'm here. A little bit of myself, I was born and raised in Spain, in Madrid, and I was always interested in fine arts. My earliest memory of fine arts and the world of the graphic world and then just beauty was when I grabbed the keys of my parents and I etched my first drawing onto a freshly painted, varnished door, and it stayed there forever. Oh my gosh, that's wild. To this day, I still see it when I go and visit my mom.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, I grew up in a family of artists.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah. Well, that makes it easy to grow your creativity from a young age.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, yeah. But to me, that was normal. My dad was the chair of the printmaking department in the fine arts school in Madrid. My mom, she was the head of the drawing department in a very big high school. So I would see them, well, first, we'll get to that later, but grade their work, like late at night, when... All of us, it was four of us, you know, we would, we were supposed to kind of do our homework or something. I would scurry over and be like, what are you doing? Can I watch? Oh, cool. Cool, cool. Yeah. And then I would visit my dad, my dad in fine arts school. And he would actually let me in through the back door. Before he got into teaching printmaking, he was teaching a drawing class. And I fell in love with it instantly. Back then it was five years of education, not four. So it was a fourth or fifth year class towards the end of the studies. And it increased the retentiveness and the muscle memory and how much you could gather. You could not ask the actors to stop. um oh my gosh repeat routines one minute three minutes and then 10 minutes and they would start from the beginning again so you would have to capture one scene and then draw it on a large very large board and but that's wild so
SPEAKER_01:that so that there's uh i could kind of already see a bit of a
SPEAKER_00:uh
SPEAKER_01:you know, a bit of a skill set being developed even at an early age for, you know, fast renderings and fast drawings and doing like these, you know, kind of off the cuff product development, you know, when you're at that early nascent stage of product design. So that's interesting that, you know, you're kind of drawing quickly, right? You're kind of getting the motion of the characters out in a speedy fashion without kind of paying attention to specific details along the way.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So you couldn't stop... and kind of draw the specific details, nails or the hand or part of the chest. It had to be the entire thing.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that's interesting. And so from that young age, moving up into high school and your studies in college, can you talk me through kind of the development of getting to maybe even choosing industrial design as a profession or, you know, or teaching for that matter.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So I started, yeah, fine arts was just the natural inclination. So it was just the natural step. I had grown up smelling. It was actually interesting. It's mostly the smells, the smell of the ink, the printmaking ink, the smell of the oil paints.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:the smell of the classrooms, and I just liked all that. I wanted it. So I got into fine arts, and you had to pass an exam to get in. It was mostly at the time having to draw full-size figures of statues, of Greek statues or Roman statues. Sure. So you had to be very good to be admitted, even though it was fine arts. You had to do good. And where was this? Yeah, where were you at this point? Yeah, Madrid. And then I went through the motions first three years of going in fine arts. In Madrid. In Madrid. Still in Madrid. Yeah. But it was not until my fourth year of education when I got, you know, this teacher. And then suddenly... It opened up, he opened up the world of critique. I had never experienced that. It's like, what do you mean? There's going to be a panel? People coming from outside and critiquing the work?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I was not the least scared, but just having to defend your drawings or your projects in front of an audience, standing up there.
SPEAKER_01:So I can totally see now why you were one of my favorite professors in college because you... did have a heavy you know you had no quarters for uh for the students and their work when uh when it came to critiquing and presentation and for me i you know i loved it it's like you know no just you know tell me how tell me what i what needs to be what i need to work on tell me how to you know level up my game uh and and you were so good at that so that's interesting to hear that uh yeah at a very at this stage you were yeah uh brought into the light of critique.
SPEAKER_00:I guess there is a technique to it. One that I have heard from various sources as we go into training and becoming a better teacher. I knew I was doing that, but I didn't know exactly what it had a name. I guess it's the sandwich method. I'm not sure if you have heard.
SPEAKER_01:What is it called again?
SPEAKER_00:Nice sandwich. Sandwich
SPEAKER_01:method. Okay. Do tell.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so first you say a couple of nice things to kind of open up, not to intimidate. All right, this is looking interesting. And then the but, B-U-T, big thing. You tell them exactly how it is, and then some final good, final remarks to wrap the whole thing up. But you don't leave anything behind. I
SPEAKER_01:see, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I feel you don't give them a service. It's a disservice if you don't tell the student.
UNKNOWN:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:100% agree. Yeah, 100% agree. So that's, yeah, that's interesting. And so getting into these critique classes, going through that?
SPEAKER_00:So I wanted to discover the world, and I applied to many scholarships, quite many. At that point, I was getting good grades, and it was not enough just to get good grades, so I went abroad. full steam and I wanted to get the best possible grades so I would bump up my chances of getting a scholarship. Yeah. Because, yeah, my parents couldn't afford sending me abroad to study a master's or even less a PhD. So I did that, starting applying everywhere until I got... So in the meantime, in the fourth year of my studies, I had to go to the military. It was a draft service I had to go. So... Okay. Despite the nervousness of being in an unfamiliar territory, I ended up gaining a new respect for that side, even though I never wanted to be a military officer. I got that, and then I studied at Knight, not to lose a year. And then one night in the military headquarters, I decided to apply for this scholarship to study in the U.S.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And my mom, I think she, after 20 years, she regretted that I, she went to pick up the form to fill out because I couldn't go because I was regarding a post or something. Oh, if I hadn't picked that up for you, you would still be in Europe. Well, she picked it up and I filled it. Two weeks later, I was summoned to this, it's called La Caixa. It's a special fellowship. Everything is paid for. Wow. interviewed the sixth floor very posh room the whole thing so later on i was admitted into this program and i was given the uh the fellowship by no less than the king and queen of spain so really there i was um oh my gosh
SPEAKER_01:what a what a crazy experience yes
SPEAKER_00:and for those of you listening or watching i have to tell you the king and queen, I'm not sure if this is the policy or whatever, but they shake very firmly their hands. Very firmly, I was just very surprised about that. So just note on the side.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, wow. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting. So yeah, I got that scholarship. I got the highest GPA in the country on fine arts in that year. So I knew I had a chance. Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:The next thing I knew, I was in New York City. I had applied to a bunch of schools, but New York City seemed just the right place to be. Two luggages and renting a room with shared bathrooms that I had dilapidated YMCA in Brooklyn and hearing gunshots. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's very Brooklyn. Hearing gunshots at night. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's how I started. I'm like, I'm not sure where I'm going. I guess we'll... And then went to Prado Institute. That was the choice.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah. And that's where you got your master's? Or was that... Yeah, that was
SPEAKER_00:my master's in industrial design.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. And then after that is where we met at the Art Institute, right? You taught there for, was it six years or so?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, go ahead. So,
SPEAKER_00:yeah, yeah. So I stayed in New York City being a student and then practicing design for, it was a few years until I got to Colorado, so... Went to New York, worked mostly at Colgate-Palmolive and then other smaller firms, but it was basically a full-time freelancer with them. Great experience taking the subway to Park Avenue in front of the Waldorf Astoria and then just the whole thing. There is a whole thing about folding your New York Times newspapers so you can still hold on to the bar while reading just the section that you wanted. It was just very interesting to fit in.
SPEAKER_01:That's an interesting technique there, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There is. These days, now you just grab your phone. But I had great mentors there. A couple of them went to Pride Institute, too. It was a fantastic experience there. So, yeah, I stayed in New York until I had to go back to Spain for a couple of years, work there at a different school. That's where I started teaching, actually, in Spain. More to that, I guess, later when I talk more about teaching. But there was an Italian school there that had opened up, Istituto Europeo di Design. I guess the European Institute of Design. So I taught there one or two classes, and then they kept on giving me more and more and more. I became the IED advisor. And that's when I fell in love with teaching.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, the... Interesting. So, yeah, so that transition started happening there. And what was it about, kind of, what was the allure with teaching as opposed to, you know, you had worked with Colgate-Palmolive, you had traveled a little bit, had done some freelance and whatnot. What helped to kind of push you over to the edge to get into teaching?
SPEAKER_00:I was good at that. Yeah. Just, I, well... I guess to the audience, I don't know if that's part of growing up or not, but when you start to develop your own personality, you want to follow, I guess your parents steps, but at the same time, not be a continuation of your parents. So how do you do that? Oh, I'll never be a teacher like my parents. So I didn't, but then I started this gig and then I realized, gee, This is me. This is not an extension of my parents, but I actually like it. I really do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Let's see where it leads me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so you kind of touched a little bit on that personal discovery, getting into teaching. Was there something with industrial design that also led you to continue in that path? Anything along the way that kind of know really sucked you into the vocation of industrial design as a practice and teaching
SPEAKER_00:yes well my realization again we have to remember that when i started in spain teaching students hadn't had the experience well it's it's urban as an urban environment so many students don't have the the luxury I guess we can call that, to have tinkered. I want to talk about tinkering in garages or basements more in this interview, but many students never had that opportunity. So they were very raw, if that's the word. They didn't know how to basically, I think it's a matter of allowing yourself the opportunity to explore. And what is even more important, without consequences, right?
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah, no failure. It's all learning, right? It's all learning.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly, exactly. Sometimes, I'm not sure, teachers in middle school or high school, if we don't have good role models, they don't show you the path of ultimately self-discovery. But if you don't do it perfectly, whatever it is that is mildly related to the arts, it's not good. So at that point... The mind is very permeable and at the same time fragile. So if basically a power figure, which is a teacher, doesn't give you the right tools to process all that information that you're assimilating, then you block yourself off. So a lot of these students didn't really have that opportunity. through games little by little, you know, suddenly get them that, that interest. I knew they had it, but, um, I was kind of helping them get that spark.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And that spark, I tell you that it reminds me, you know, when I was in studying industrial design, it was, yeah, the, the, the ability to just experiment and explore different materials and, uh, and, and not be afraid to, to, to, to totally mess up an entire project because it's a very much a safe world, right? A safe environment in some of these art colleges and design colleges because you can do that very thing. And it's not necessarily tied to a grade. It's tied to, your grade is more tied to the exploration, the experimentation, the thought that you go through to make a thing or break a thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. I'd like to talk more about that later on. Sure, yeah, let's do that. I was reviewing a few points. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:absolutely. And I think you, I'd love to dig into the mentorship side of things because as teaching, you know, it implies that you're also a mentor along the way. You're not only kind of just doling out design ideas and design methods and processes on how to sketch. But, you know, for me, you know, I've had, even before college, I had some mentors that, were really pivotal in my life to kind of get me into industrial design. And so I'm wondering, did you have a mentor growing up or someone
SPEAKER_00:who... Certainly I did.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I had quite a few, but I didn't know at that time that I had them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. That's some of my experiences as well. But yeah, in hindsight, you look back and you're like, wow, they really pushed me. But tell me, can you give me an example or talk through or about someone that... really was a pivotal person in your life
SPEAKER_00:but he decided to take a class in fine arts building which was just right next door on design one and then i took him again design two i was just hooked his style of teaching was visceral raw and and um unfiltered you know i've never heard anybody saying so many bad words in just one class i would not be able to repeat it here But he was just a nightmare in the sense that you had to perform in order to be able to do a good job so you could present before your people. So he would invite all his friends, architects that had been practicing for many years, and you just have to stand there and present your work. But that's one thing. I guess what he really instilled into us is love for the materials and respect for your elderly designers, if we can call it. He published books as well, magazines, and he would just open up his door in his studio for anyone who wanted to come. Nobody did, but I said, hey, can I go? So I would end up being at his studio, just watching him prepare things, and I would help him. Not paid, just because I wanted to. I've been always very curious and wanting to know more. I ended up actually working for him for a little bit. So that's one of them, certainly, that opened up the field of design. On the other side was, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was going to ask, you said you ended up working for him. Were you kind of an associate professor with him, or what was that about?
SPEAKER_00:Well, he needed help in his design studio. He was getting busier and busier. And then I got firsthand eyes on how his studio worked. And he had a double, well, triple or quadruple roles, different roles. I mean, he never stood quiet. He was publishing magazines. I'm talking like half-inch-thick magazines. So I would hear him talk to the publisher and then all the people that he had to interview and then help him produce. with that help him with with drafting um i had already taken some autocad classes and just being at the studio and then helping him in any capacity i
SPEAKER_01:see so was there a a particular philosophy that he had that you also gravitated to by chance
SPEAKER_00:absolutely yeah um always keeping the the uh in design we would call it end users But the dwellers of the buildings in mind always first, it's about the people that will be using your designs. On top of what I said, a passion for the materials, not just knowing about the materials, a passion for it. knowing them intimately why are you using corten steel what happens with it when it not decays but when it changes color after you know the different seasons why are you using these tiles why are you using this yeah why are you using why are you placing these bathrooms over here and not somewhere else and so on so certainly open up the eyes on design i love it yeah you know as i'm thinking through it
SPEAKER_01:you
SPEAKER_00:know
SPEAKER_01:For us, it might have just kind of happened by coincidence or serendipity, but having a mentor or someone that you ended up gravitating to. But for those out there listening or watching that are curious to find or have recommendations on seeking out mentorship, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Simple as that. I decide to pick up the phone and call. yeah and if they turn yeah yeah if they close the doors on you well then there is the next one on the uh not yellow pages but on the list just keep on calling yes start start well if you're a high schooler yeah start with the people at the wood shop or if you have a metal shop start talking to them um They might look sometimes scary, menacing, but sometimes they are that way because they want to keep you all alive and with all the fingers in the hands. Once you pass that, they really have, the really good ones will point you in the right direction. Open now, people are starting to appreciate it more. But back then it was just, you know, the secret. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so that, you know, maybe with some advice for high schoolers, how about college and then maybe an example of people who are fresh out of college, you know, maybe finding a job or just getting into a new job and still looking for some of that
SPEAKER_00:mentorship as well? Yeah, well, that's a whole different chapter. Getting out of your studies and being in the real world could be for some people. Obviously, if you are very good or if you have just the right... connections or the lack to obtain a job, it's a seamless transition. But for many, it's a hard job. Just knock at all the doors, even if a hundred of them close, maybe the hundredth and one will open it or leave it ajar, just enough to start a conversation. So one thing that I have seen more in the US compared to, I guess, my European experience would be that In the U.S., more people are open to, are more prone to open up their doors compared to Europe. I guess it has to do also with the job market. Unemployment there is more rampant for a variety of reasons. So it's doubled. And for the youth, it could reach up to 30%. But not in the U.S., so you have more opportunities for internships. Internships, those of you who are listening, it's a fantastic experience. Even if you hated it, it doesn't matter. The design community is small after all. And if you do a good job, you know, word will pass around. Okay, well, you work with these guys and at the end of the internship, you can ask, well, can I get a letter of recommendation from you or some sort of a mention that might open up another door? Yeah, one thing that I would recommend though, when you start, there's a difference between an internship and a mentor. The really good mentors are the ones that would want to open up their studios or doors for you without any monetary exchange. That's very important. Those are the people that will really make an impact. An internship could be also very good, but once you transact money, There is a different feel for things.
SPEAKER_01:Now, that's an interesting point. Yeah, absolutely. I think I would definitely agree with you. I've had kind of both experiences as well and definitely agree that you can find some real gems of people to work with and work for that may not be able to offer a stipend or something like that, but are doing some really good work. They're deeply rooted in the process and are much more highly engaged. with their team and the work being done. So that's great, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I'd like to mention another mentor that I had prior to this teacher. Gerardo Vielva, he was a photographer. He at some point had received the first prize, I guess the National Medal for Photography in Spain. And my dad one day told me, well, did you know that this guy, your neighbor, received this medal? Oh, what do you mean? But wasn't he a military guy? Yeah, but that was his job. But then he had this passion and decided, oh, I'd love to visit him. Yes, I talked to him and he says, I was a teenager. Come to his studio and let me tell you. Afternoons talking and he would just... talk about his experiences being in the military, but not so much the military, but I guess when Paris was liberated, he participated in that, I guess a small section of Spanish troops were sent there. But he didn't talk about the military at all. He was talking on how he would sneak out and visit the museums in Paris. But not only that, he would that always in the context of the photographs that he would take so he would open up his big chest of photographs and they were just all these treasures right and he would show me the pictures and so now let me tell you this the picture behind the uh all the story behind this picture because right now you only see the end product let me tell you what happened all the middle steps and it was just fantastic we would have tea and then his very sweet wife would come over jorge do you want to stay for dinner and then we would stay even longer four or five hours of talking. So about art, composition, in photography, I guess waiting for the right moment until the composition would fix itself almost magically, but you needed to have just the patience, the patience to be in the right spot with the right camera position and then just clicking it and kind of sniffing around for that opportunity. So he taught me also to be insightful. So I would hear these stories and I would like, oh, I guess I could translate that into design just to take the pulse on society as a designer. Well, he was doing that, but just for the right frame, the right moment to capture it for eternity, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it kind of takes me, it leads me into maybe a discussion we can move over to industrial design specifically. I mean, the whole storytelling aspects and the insights that you gathered from this person, you know, I think dovetails perfectly into the vocation of industrial design. And also maybe even the snapshot, too, because I can kind of think of the analogy of a snapshot in time when you're developing a product. And that is to say, you know, what is the general pulse of the culture or the target market or the user? And I think, you know, over time, you know, that's the reason why we have new products coming out. We have different senses and sensibilities of trends or materials over time, and it's simply a snapshot in time, right? Yeah, and I'm wondering...
SPEAKER_00:That's right. You serve a purpose.
SPEAKER_01:So within that kind of realm of thought, industrial design as a practice in and of itself, how have you seen the design field change over time from maybe even schooling to where even just through the course of your teachings, from whether it was at RISD or at UConn here? I'm curious to hear about what... Maybe it's tools. I don't want to lead you here, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. I guess when I was still a student, everybody kept on talking about the information superhighway. Wow. Still, internet hadn't settled in as the word. Kareem Rashid, this designer, was teaching at the time before, I guess, he became... if we can use the word famous or something. He was teaching a class. I never took his class, but I kept on hearing from other students, oh, the information highway, like what the hell is that? So that was actually coming. So that was, I guess, if I was going to give you some snapshots, that would be one. Years later, I was already working in New York City, new york state i was going to say new york city our client was in new york city mostly for we were working for sony electronics and we were doing exhibits for bloomline associates he was also a teacher part-time teacher at proud institute but i was working for him and then we had one of the sony executives kept on referring to connectivity and having all the gadgets combining. And he was kind of the guru of what could happen later on. This is late 90s at this point. And we would make all these trade shows to display the new Sony gadgets. We need to remember that at the time, pretty much like now, Apple is the brand name. We're talking
SPEAKER_01:like Walkmans.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly, exactly. Prior to Apple, I guess Apple was already out there, but Sony was the big name, the big logo that they had to remember. They need to switch to Sony. the apple that is half bitten. But at the time, it was that. And hearing this guy and others present to get everybody enthused in Las Vegas, 100,000 visitors coming over and seeing the latest products, and they were talking about that, something was happening. You could tell. So this is just to lead us into the big shift that we have seen in industrial design towards Not so much CAD, because we kind of saw it coming. So I guess that was one. But it was mostly UI, UX, and the emergence of the screens, and how, to a good degree, all these products that used to be physical, an alarm clock, a temperature gauge that you put on the window, or the weather that you would have to go to the newspaper and kind of see what would be the weather for today and the forecast and all that. All these different products or services now compressed into one phone. Before that, I guess the internet, you could just go online. But that has been a big transition for good and bad, actually. And we just have to adjust to it. So I live near Providence and recently there were some parking meters that have been changed and they were using the old poles and so they put the new gadgets on top but they never got to adjust the human factors. I teach a class on human factors now at the University of Connecticut and they never considered, ever considered changing the height of the poles. And I don't consider myself being particularly short. Depending on where you go in town or what pole, you don't even see the screen. The angle is not correct. And you have to work digitally. I mean, try to figure out... My eyesight, for example, is not as best as it was a few years ago. So you get the glare. And then it's night. Right,
SPEAKER_01:right off the sky.
SPEAKER_00:Right, yeah. right and someone comes and scratches that happened to me just last week scratches the screen and kind of adds the signature you know the graffiti thing and right you try to read through that on top of being on your tippy toes to actually reach the height the perfect viewing height it's like okay so nobody figured out
SPEAKER_01:oh my gosh
SPEAKER_00:so yeah so it's all digital now so that you have no buttons you don't have a sensory way to figure out if you got it right or not. I was just recently reading a book or parts of it for this human factors class on how quite often, especially for medical device, you need to have at least a double sensory input. So it's not only the screen, but you need to hear a click or you need to press something exactly. So you certainly don't get that. So many things went wrong. To my point, industrial designers would sometimes consider an object in its own, on its own. I guess that newly designed park meter was fantastic when you put it in display at the office. But once you mount it, if you don't have the correct height or the right illumination, it doesn't mean a thing.
SPEAKER_01:Throw it out the window.
SPEAKER_00:Or picking the wrong material and somebody scratches it and you don't see it.
SPEAKER_01:That's super, super interesting. Yeah, I had... When I was designing, working on the dash cart for Amazon, I did an overall human factors assessment from female or smaller statured humans at lower end of the bell curve of 5% all the way up to 95% for the taller statured humans. And that's how I kind of assessed the perpendicular average of what the screen needed to be. I mean, granted, I knew it was going to be on a static screen, form. But yeah, going through those exercises as a designer, I mean, it's pivotal to understand not only how the product looks and feels with a particular UI or screen, but also in the wild, right?
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Yeah. So back to your question of what has changed over the years, a lot and then nothing. So it's a little bit of both. We are still humans. I know they are saying that more and more will have, I guess, prosthetics that can do many more things. But until I see that, we're still humans made of flesh and bones and whatnot. So a lot of it comes down to just being in this planet and having to experience or endure, you know, the operation of certain products. Ultimately, products are just excuses to... get us to somewhere if we're driving a car or to obtain an experience or help us do something. But it seems that screens sometimes aren't the right way to do them. I would just argue that we need to kind of take a couple of steps back and look at the overall experience. Testing is key under different scenarios as much as we can with different users just to see where we are. Don't forget the fat fingers of a very large male. Sometimes we go for the smallest female, five percentile, just to get things right. But I tell you, I don't have particularly fat fingers, but some of these devices are so small. I know there has to be a compromise in the size of devices, but some people cannot just use them. It's just very difficult to get. It's either that or finding the right design so it would allow you to navigate correctly.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So, yeah, that's super interesting. I mean, we've talked a little bit about the haptic feedback of whether it's auditory or physical and visual combined. And so from putting on your professor hat for a moment and saying, and knowing that you've had some background in developing these programs, I'm curious, as industrial design, the teachable path at school, are you seeing that UI, UX, the interaction side of design being applied to some of these classes and teachings for industrial design?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, they are perfectly... Perfectly relevant. If it should be built into the studies, absolutely. There are many ways. If graphic design wants to take it, I think graphic designers then should be trained on how to deal with or understand the users. You can know a lot about graphic design, but ultimately you have to. deal with the fingers and the motions and the whole thing, and then understanding what happens from one screen to the other. Or it could be incorporated into industrial design. I don't know if you're thinking of our audience, if they are thinking of going into graphic design. Well, taking a class on UI, UX as it's called, user interface, user experience, that's great. If they offer it in graphic design, fantastic. And if they offer it in product design or industrial design, even better. I say that even better because I think what's really important is not so much coming up with a pretty design, but a design that works. And in industrial design, I don't need to sell you on how important it is to, we do, I wanted to say that we do, all the teachers in industrial design do a good job in explaining to the students how important it is to understand the user.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Absolutely. That, in and of itself, I think it should be, you know, drilled into design practice from the beginning all the way through. I mean, it's where you can collect qualitative, quantitative information, going out and doing research to understand From the quantitative side, you get the values and the factors and figures of reporting, how often someone uses a feature or a thing. But the qualitative side of it, I think, is even more important because that open-ended discussion with users, you can really leverage a conversation to suss out some of the nascent desires or the Sometimes consumers can't particularly articulate the exact need or feature, which is ergo industrial designers, but you have to be having that conversation with customers and users all the time to be able to analyze and transfer that information into a physical form of features and attributes.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. But I'll have to say a couple of things here. First, From the teacher's side and then those students that actually have the courage to get out and gather unique data, even when they are studying, that's important. So from the teacher's side, you need to find a teacher or encourage them, if you're listening to this podcast, to really get them out in the streets. Of course, in a safe way. If you're doing a study... at night and you happen to live in a city that it's kind of problematic in the evening or night, don't do it. But you can still gather certain information on campus within the safety of campus or with friends or relatives. My point is sometimes we are so framed to think within the parameters of the particular project in class that we are doing that we forget that there is the whole outdoors you have to your teachers your good teachers have to push you to get out and practice eliciting information from end users not any users but end users people that use these particular products day in and day out
SPEAKER_01:yep so i think what you're
SPEAKER_00:good
SPEAKER_01:so i was going to say i think what what you're talking about here is uh you know confirmation bias right you get the internal groups and they're collectively agreeing about a thing that needs to be implemented into the product without even doing a quick online survey, for instance, or let's just field some people on campus or in the real world for an hour and see where we land, right? That also, not just in school, I mean, personally, I've seen it happen in companies as well where, You've got a group of very intelligent, highly specialized people, and they think they have the technology to solve the world's problems, and they move forward with developing the product. And lo and behold, doing a quick research study, finding out where you may have to pivot at the 11th hour because, well, shoot, we didn't think about the behavior or use case for this and the way that someone might want to use it.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And there is a trap. There is a trap, again, back to the old, the new technologies that we have that we all use. Well, SurveyMonkey or whatever will work. Well, sometimes, but most of the times, we are losing our ability to just actually getting out and talking to physical people, like face-to-face. You get so much more. And it has to do also with the body behavior, because people sometimes... You know, might say yes, but they really mean no. You don't get that when you receive some survey done in two minutes, especially if it is very long. So many people just get tired of filling it out or they just randomize it and then submit it. Don't bother me with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's important to really get to know them.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I... I would love to, so this is maybe a good point to chat a little bit about the tinkering and the iteration process and developing products. I think you mentioned, what was it, the garage tinkering?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. If you have the wonderful luck of having parents or an uncle or somebody that offers you that free space. Again, the idea is to have it consequence-free. Of course, you don't want to chop your hand if you're using powerful tools, but within limit. If you have the opportunity to explore materials, that's terrific. And sometimes you think you don't have it, well, maybe because you didn't ask, you know? Right. Can I do this? Well... I have noticed that, I don't know, dad or mom, we have a sewing room there in the corner or a corner that we are not using. Can I have a tub, one of those Christmas tubs, and fill it with foam and learn how to carve it correctly? Or I'd love to use the sewing machine to do some soft goods. In my audience, all right, don't forget that industrial design is very complicated. linked to the world of fashion, too. We haven't started talking about it. But a lot of the good products that are out there have a very blurry line between what's considered fashion or wearables and what is actually product design. That's still product. So I don't want the audience to think that learning how to sew is something reserved to particular types of people. Not at all. But just be curious, play with things, you know, ceramics, take a class in ceramics. That's teaching you how to learn with a soft material that eventually vitrifies and gets solid. And then you can add, you know, different varnishes and whatnot. I don't know, carve wood, learn how to carve bowls. If you have the opportunity in your neighborhood, just take all those classes, even if you don't have this spot at home. But that's crucial. Legos. Legos, big thing. Any construction toy that would let you build with your own imagination.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Open-ended exploration is what you're kind of getting at,
SPEAKER_00:I think. Absolutely. I still remember the first day of class at... the Rhode Island School of Design, I would ask my students, okay, how many of you had Legos growing up? Male and female students raising their hands, all of them. That's a sign. It doesn't have to be Legos, but the point is they had that opportunity to really explore. That opens up your mind. So can I rearrange things in different ways and it's free and I can mix one set with another and destroy it entirely and build something new? Terrific.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My nephews are bonkers right now for Legos or have been for some time. I think that was like the, the go-to gift this past holiday season, but, and I'm glad to, glad to participate in offering more sets and Legos to them as well. And absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. I had a back in the, back when I was kind of tinkering around, I had Legos of course, but you know, Lincoln logs, I don't know if some of you out there remember Lincoln logs and then the Kinect systems. It was kind of like the long flat metal stamped metal trusses. Well, you could build trusses or all sorts of things. They had motors, they had pulleys. It was just a playground for just messing things up and having fun.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Arduino, for example, many students now in high school are getting the opportunity to play with that. That's more related into engineering, but that opens up another great opportunity to tinker and changing coding and figuring out
SPEAKER_01:different things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. So let me ask, I was just curious. So we talked a little bit about the garage tinkering. So if someone's just getting into that or maybe they already have a small shop, do you have any tools in mind that really come to mind as like a go-to when you're creating and making? I mean, it could be any material, any tool. I'm curious.
SPEAKER_00:Right, yeah, just start with the basics, just a band saw, maybe some powerful sander, belt sander if you can. Well, it depends. Yeah, but you can start with just like a mouse sander and then a drill and then just go from there and a couple of saws. It doesn't have to be very big, but the important thing is to have a big table and that it's not a big deal if you mess it up. Again, I cannot stress enough the importance of not having to keep everything perfect.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've just recently started tinkering. I don't know why I didn't. Years into this, I'm still learning and I love it, but I just came upon these ultrasonic knives. Have you ever used one of these? I have not. Oh, my gosh. If you're working in leather, plastics, cardboard, foam core, it shaves burrs off of steel. An ultrasonic knife, a decent one, maybe run you at$50 to$80. But I'll tell you, it is a game changer. I mean, if you're doing inlays with veneers or inlays with Mother of Pearl on a guitar or something like that, It'll cut through multiple layers of veneer and you have a perfect match when you come back to match those up. There's no loss of material when you cut it away. It's amazing. Check it out. It's pretty wild.
SPEAKER_00:If I may say, back to the tinkering, our audience shouldn't really be too worried about having to build something that is awesome. You can build whatever. The point is just to experience the materials without the fear of having to present to someone or fearing that it will not turn out good. When I was a teenager, I had the garage and I was just building model boats with the interior design and the whole thing. I would carve the outside and then I experienced working. I practiced building all the ribs and the whole thing. I didn't have books. I just invented the whole thing. Then I carved a smoking pipe. I never smoked, but I wanted to figure out how to cover in a single sitting and then putting the drill through on the spout and the whole thing. So I don't know. It was just the whole idea was just to experience the materials. It doesn't matter really what it is, but allowing yourself that opportunity to explore.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And... You know, on the other side of that, from the physical side to maybe the drawing and sketching side, I know you've authored a couple of books around sketching. Can you speak to those? I think you have two right now, is that correct?
SPEAKER_00:That's right. The first one is Perspective Sketching, Freehand and Digital Drawing Techniques for Artists and Designers. This was called Out of the Blue, got this publisher by Rockport published. They had called me up, hey, we don't have an author and we want this specific title. And we looked you up and I think we think you would be a great candidate, right?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00:So I said yes. Holy cow. In just one day. That's awesome. Thanks to
SPEAKER_01:have my copy here. I signed for you. This is what it looks like. Yes, thank you very much. Signed by Jorge, yours truly, I guess. Yeah. No, it's a great book. Perspective Sketching Freehand and Digital Drawing Techniques for Artists and Designers. Yeah, just pop open a couple of quick indicating profile character. Yeah. Can you talk about, talk through a couple of quick techniques that from a hand rendering perspective that you could explain without, You know anything on video right now to to really make the your your concept sketches and drawings pop
SPEAKER_00:Yes, well first just to give some sort of a like a general background on sketching why it's important in the profession Mainly because well I have we have a lot of students asking well Do I really need to be a good rendering artist or a sketcher to write right to be a good designer and? Well, there is the long and short answer. The short answer is no, but it will certainly be, you know, you don't have to be good at that, but it will help if you are good. Sketching, now we have, you can do the highly polished sketches and fully blown renderings that, you know, in the yesteryear they would do with airbrushes and look terrific and then you would mount. Right. You can do them with a computer. Fine, I'll give you that, but it's a couple of things. First is the time that it takes. Time professionally equals money. The time that it gets you to the point of building the shell in the computer, whether you're using SolidWorks or other 3D program, and then rendering with the right materials and light and the whole thing, it takes a while. By the time you have done that... you might as well have done 10 or 20 good sketches per day. So some people just would bring their hands to the head and say, what? What? But my professor would only give me like, we would just need to show three sketches. Yeah, because we have to continue with the program and we cannot ask you to do 200 sketches. In the real world, it's 200 or 2,000. So it's a lot. There is a point about this.
SPEAKER_01:That's
SPEAKER_00:right. Yeah. In industrial design, you have to explore. I say that in almost every class that I teach. You have, hopefully you would agree with me, there is a point of no return when you design a product. Designing, graphic design, maybe you can stop the presses and trash those away. Maybe you would have thrown away maybe$300,000 or half a million on the top end. but you cannot stop um the the manufacturing of something you can but then you would have to redo the molds and start all over again that's millions of dollars of investment
SPEAKER_01:yeah as i say risk risking uh your your job as well at the same time i mean there's a lot of stakeholders and a lot of inertia going on when you get to that stage yeah i agree
SPEAKER_00:yeah i agree there is a certain level of uncertainty but designers to the point back to to to sketching you have to be as sure as you can be that you have explored all avenues and they have reached to something that it's doable that can happen and then sketching would turn into making models and the whole thing um so that's one thing exploring all avenues and then another thing is just keeping a record of the process you not always have to show all the sketches to your peers or your project manager or the client. Remember, there is a particular technique, we can say that, of interacting with a client. You need to handhold them a lot. Not that they are stupid and they are really clever, but they are not designers. So if you offer them 100, 200 sketches, they will not know what to pick. You have to give them like a very, I guess, studied or well-defined set of sketches, three or five, five might even be a lot to choose from. But at any given point, they might ask you, hey, hold on a second before we choose this one, which I think would be the correct one. Can you tell us how you got there? And now you would have to open up your second briefcase, that's where you would carry everything with you to the meetings, and show the steps that got you to that point. So even though you're only showing them just the major milestones, you as an engineer would do that too, or a lawyer too. At any given point, a professional in general has to show prove that they had they have followed a continuous and rational path of choosing their direction all right so that the client would actually i'd love to add funds yeah
SPEAKER_01:yeah no i was going to say i'd love to add to that too because uh it's it's not only that of the exploration but you know the perception you mentioned to clients or or work uh or leadership for instance when you come to them with a more polished whether it's a 3d model or like let's call it a second or third revision refined sketch, they're already thinking this is the answer, right? And if you bring them something that is that polished or finished out of the gate, it really does an unfortunate disservice to the exploration because you've already communicated to them visually that you've converged on this as an answer And a lot of times conversation will spin out to, okay, what are the next steps when you're still trying to solve or need to solve maybe ergonomic issues or how this thing is going to be interacted with, right?
SPEAKER_00:That's absolutely right, Rob. In the rendering classes that I have taught at different schools, I say that very precisely because they are very good students who had the opportunity of learning CAD early on, even in high school. And they're saying, oh, well, we can do these polished renderings. Well, you're missing the point. Polished renderings sometimes backfire. Because again, it's the idea clients don't know any better. But sometimes we need to, yes, I'll use this word, dam down our renderings. Even if you're a very good rendering artist, you have to dummy them a little bit. you know do some flare strokes and some gestural strokes on purpose on top of a finished drawing so it looks more under defined it's nothing more than opening the door for the client to say something this is not just a communication a dialogue that goes in one well the communication that goes one way it's a dialogue so you need to hear from them as much as they need to hear from you and drawings are a great way so underdo them if that makes sense at all
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah yeah yeah love it yeah that's great so so yeah are there do you have any you know i love love the the kind of the comment around the the flares flaring of the the pens and the sketching um
SPEAKER_00:right
SPEAKER_01:are there you know techniques to make your even your even your kind of front-end sketches or very loose sketches pop on the page are there materials and pens or markers you like to use
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, Copic is my favorite brand.
SPEAKER_01:You like those over the ad markers? I mean, the ad markers, they've got acetone, and it's like you've got to use them in a ventilated area.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, any brand really would do, but Copics are particularly good. I like them because they tend to be truer to the original color. especially with grays. Never mix cool and warm grays on the same. Well, you can on the same drawing, but you have to start with good gray scales. It's almost like when you're starting to playing piano and you go through the scales. Same thing with the markers. There is a couple of reasons why we use markers in the profession. They are a wet technique and they act similarly to watercolors, but they dry flat as opposed to watercolors. If you don't dry, if you don't stretch the paper first and then tape it, it would curl the paper. So that's a disadvantage. And the color stays very bright and true to the color that you purchased. Work always from light to dark colors. and then have a sequence. I always use non-photo blue pencils. Try them on the side first just to see if they would smear once you put markers on top. Try to avoid number two pencils because they would smear a lot more. And what's even more important, add your black lines later. Test your markers always on the side. If you have a large size piece of paper, use 25% of that paper as practice paper, almost as if you were going, if you were painting canvas. I guess some artists would have another canvas on the side with the same finish and test their brushes and different techniques on the side and before they apply the brush strokes on the canvas. This is the same thing, but try the same paper. And then finally, I know it's kind of, scary when you work with markers because you cannot erase them. That's precisely the point. So try to hide away your eraser. Don't use it at all. So you would say, well, what if my drawings are not good? All right. So what you can do first is use tracing paper. Tracing paper is your best friend. because again, you're allowing yourself the opportunity to work in layers without having to commit. So many layers, and once you get to a good one, if you don't want to ruin that final outline, well, then you put another, you use a marker paper that would be semi-translucent, you put it over, you trace it with blue lines, and now you can start rendering on top. The process is very quick. And with practice, yeah, with practice, you can just do 10 good drawings a day. Rob, you have your own experience, you know, rendering a lot day in and day out. So there is a technique to it, certainly, right?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Yeah, you know, I think it's really, really, for me, I really enjoyed actually seeing the evolution of my style. grow as you do that. And the trace paper, I like to just throw lines down with flare pens on the trace paper. And then, as you mentioned, you can layer them. But one interesting technique that I've used in the past to check my perspective, because I don't know, I don't, you know, I don't draw like the perspective vanishing lines or anything like that anymore. But what I'll do, you know, what I'll do is I'll flip the trace paper over and and check my things like ellipses or the vanishing points on a couple different things because it's interesting because your mind will perceive it very differently, obviously from the opposite angle. And it's weird how your brain will put together what doesn't quite look right anymore. And so it's a good way to kind of check yourself too as you get better and better with drawing that you're on point with some of those key points. forms and shapes.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I got to learn that when I was small, growing up, and watching my dad do prints, printmaking etching. Oh, interesting,
SPEAKER_01:yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They have to work in reverse.
SPEAKER_01:Right, because you're printing everything, because the screen is backwards, right? And then you print it, and then, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So you have to carve out on copper plates, right? But you need to have first the drawing, and then they have a mirror placed at 45 degrees, and they put their drawing in front, and then you have the plate. So you see the image reverse, and that's what you have to draw there.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so you're always thinking with the other side of the brain. Yes, I tell the students, too, when drawing, if you need to check for accuracy of your lines to see something is really wrong, go to the bathroom. and put the image against the, well, a couple of feet from the mirror to check if there is anything wrong. You'll spot it right away. Again, it's the idea that the mind is not used to that new shape. You need to relearn it and then you get instant feedback from yourself. Or you can put, if you can afford it, put your drawings on timeout for a couple of hours or one day and then see them with a fresh eye. you'll know right away what's missing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Yeah. So, um, I'd love to switch gears here for a minute. That's, that's a really great tips and techniques here. Uh, a couple of, uh, rapid fire questions, and then maybe we can, uh, we can wrap it up and tell everybody where to kind of catch you or maybe message you. And, uh, and so, so yeah, let's, let's do it. Uh, all right. So what are, what do you think are the biggest misconceptions of industrial design?
SPEAKER_00:That it is just for the elite. Not at all. It's for everybody. And that you have to be a star designer. Not at all. The best designs are made by committed designers, and we don't know the names of who made them, but if they are good, that's all we care. That is unless you want to be a showman. and be the center of attention, but then we are talking about something completely different. You might still be very successful, but there is a difference. I keep on hearing over and over with my teenage kids, oh, the YouTuber, should I be one? They're making this much money and this and that. They're only seeing part of the story, which is only the success. Basically, they are storytellers. and they are counting on you and all the likes to make a living out of it.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, industrial design is completely different.
SPEAKER_01:It's for everybody. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. How about a side non-related creative pursuits?
SPEAKER_00:I love painting and drawing. Back to the idea of that potato with hairs that I scratched on the recently varnished doors. Yeah, always have an outlet. Different than industrial design. When I was at RISD or now at UConn, students asking me, but I love industrial design. That's all I think. Like, no, do something completely unrelated, but something that would let other creative juices out. Particularly, I like painting, landscapes, and watercolors, very large size watercolors of buildings. I'm developing a series of Boston paintings a very large format, like three feet by four and a half, very long, of Boston in the evening and on rainy days. And I like plein air painting, mainly because it gets me the opportunity to be outside, even if you get bitten by mosquitoes, but the whole point is just to being there. When I take the painting home, I am brought back to that moment when I was painting, and that's the capture of the moment. It gets back to the idea of that mentor that I had when he was taking those photographs. It's just that moment, and it's mine. And it's mine not so much that I want to keep those paintings. Sometimes I would give them away to friends and everything, but when I visit their houses, I am transported to the moment when I was painting it. Yeah, and then portraits. I do portraits of children just with sanguine bars. I like doing that.
SPEAKER_01:Great, great. All right, one last one. How about your favorite object for design? Could be a tool, could be a book, a place.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I particularly like kitchen gadgets. I would spend hours at any store that would have... that would be gadgety, especially kitchen. I love cooking too, but just spending hours and understanding how all the products work and would be two hours, three hours, the whole afternoon, but just watching them. One of my favorite, I didn't research it for this particular chat today, but there is a great design. I think it comes from Norway. It's a cast iron pot that has a lid and cast iron, it has... a tab in the middle, and then you fit through the lid. It has like a very upside-down shape, like a worn-out mountain handle made out of wood. So that handle connects to the lid and then two small indentations on the pot. It closes it entirely. The handle also can be used to lift the pot and put it on the side. It's terrific. Just three parts. Super clever. Very well designed, nothing more than cast iron and a piece of wood cut in a very kind of a bridgey type shape. The best design ever. And then just the little things that make your life more easy at home. You know, simple designs. Like who designed the first toothbrush or comb? That's clever if you think about it. Just the simple things. And of course, the experience of when you rent a car and you have not experienced that particular brand. And then nobody reads the manuals, right? Even if you would ever find it on the glove compartment. But just the thrill of sitting in your car and try to touch everything and figure this machine out. That's a great thrill. And it doesn't matter what car it is. It's just the thrill of learning it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Wow. That's, that's great. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. My, my, my car came with a thick, thick manual and I started reading some of it, some of the highlights and, and I just like, I just want to sit in it and drive it and, and play with the buttons and the gadgets and feel the leather and, you know what I mean? Get, get geek out on it. But that's great. So we've, we've covered a ton of ground over here and I couldn't thank you more for taking the time to chat. What, if anything, is still on your mind that you would want to touch base on?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I have two websites. I haven't updated them in a while, but if you were asking me how our audience can reach out to me, idrender.com, you don't have to subscribe, and renderinginteriors.com, one word. I have taught also interior design for a while because I think those two professions are very connected. They can watch free videos there. I should update them more often. But, you know, they have, they can hear my voice there and see how I work, you know. And if they want to stop over at the university, you know, feel free to stop by. Yeah, or enroll. Or enroll, that's right. Yeah, we're coming up with two programs, concentration in industrial design. We're offering now a minor in industrial design. And also of new creation, some schools are doing that, which is combining more engineering and industrial design. So we are offering as well, we already got, woohoo, our first students enrolled, multidisciplinary degree in engineering, but with specialization in industrial design. So you get to be an engineer, Abbott accredited, but with eight classes, that cover the core of the profession. If I may say, this is something that we had done before, I had done in other schools, which is try to link the bridge between engineering and design. Sometimes we live very far apart, and if anything we need to do, we designers need to do a better job communicating with engineers, and engineers are now starting to understand how important it is to communicate well with designers.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, I couldn't agree more. My experience has told me the exact same thing and I will add that don't be discouraged when you are in a team of engineers. It takes time to communicate with them and garner a language together that is collaborative and fruitful. So that's great. I really appreciate it, Jorge. You've been an amazing guest. I'd love to have you on again as things transpire. I'll be happy to. Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in for this episode. If you like what you're hearing, go ahead and smash that subscribe button. No, I'm just kidding. Listen, we've got a website. It's theidpodcast.co. Check it out. We've got a lot of great stuff on there, including obviously the podcasts. Also, tools for the trade of design and being creative. A lot of interesting and fun things to pick up there to expand your exploration and being creative. Well, this is Rob. Signing off for another episode of Designing in the Wild.
