Matt Beale will be presenting at the 2013 IDSA Central District Design Conference later this month. Check back for an article delineating his ideas after the conference, but in the meantime, the topic of his talk:
So Many Choices: Navigating a Changing Discipline
Design research, interface design, experience design, and design thinking now have visibility that rivals and sometimes exceeds the visibility of industrial design. In addition, the increasing adoption of interdisciplinary design processes has challenged the old ideal of the da Vinci designer. This fragmentation and change has been going on for a while and can be expected to continue. What is the best way, today, and in the future, to chart or re-chart a meaningful and successful career path?
Many industrial designers have responded by adding new skills, while others have rebranded their traditional skills under a new name. Some have stayed the course, practicing in the traditional way under the traditional moniker, while others simply call themselves designers, seeing these emerging disciplines and industrial design itself under the larger design umbrella.
In a compelling visual and verbal session, Matt Beale will draw from personal experience as a business owner, practitioner, and educator, interviews with students and professionals, and research into our own and analogous professions. He will help you better understand the implications of fragmentation and change in your careers and encourage you to grab hold of the reins.
Matt Beale is an industrial designer, an instructor at Carnegie Mellon University, and the president of Daedalus, a full-service product development firm in Pittsburgh.
