INDUSTRIAL DESIGN: the things I remember from school aren't the ones I thought would matter

Auburn recently interviewed me for a series on industrial design alumni from the 2000s, and it made me think about something I hadn't in a while.

In school you assume the skills you carry forward are the technical ones like sketching, CAD, and model making. Those mattered, but they aren't what I lean on daily.

What lasted was learning to think through a problem nobody defined yet, to defend an idea under criticism, and to solve it before making it beautiful. Software and manufacturing changed, but the fundamentals held. More than 20 years in, almost nothing I rely on came from a tool.

If you're still in school, don't chase every new piece of software. Learn to solve problems. That skill has outlived every shift I've seen.

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