How the Pandemic Has Changed the Way We Interact With Design
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, schools and businesses were forced to go remote to help stop the spread of the virus. But what does a field like industrial design do when much of its content traditionally relies on physical prototyping and sharing ideas with peers in a studio setting? As designers traversing this unfamiliar landscape, we have had to adapt to new ways of doing things — learning new methods that may have long lasting effects within the design community.
How is a product design class taught remotely?
Before campuses went fully virtual, working in a studio — building with your hands and connecting with fellow designers about problems and ideas, was a very valuable part of design education. Some argue that this sense of “studio culture” could never be replaced, and in a way, they would be right. Nothing could truly ever replace that in-person experience, but we have still managed to work our way around it.
As design students, we have learned the ins and outs of a plethora of virtual platforms that emulate the experience of collaborating in person. Without access to a campus shop environment or power tools, we have strengthened our skills in the realm of CAD modeling, as opposed to physical model making. We have also extended our skills to the art of digital presentations.
Even though that sense of traditional “studio culture” may have been missing, we as designers were resilient and found ways to learn and share information regardless. Although it takes more effort to keep up connections with classmates virtually — as opposed to seeing your peers on a daily basis — we adopted new modes of communication that we have taken with us even after returning to residentially taught courses.
How do we collaborate with other designers without meeting face-to-face?
Making sure that everyone is on track in a group project can be hard enough when you are meeting in person, but going remote only magnified the issue. Thankfully, virtual platforms such as Figma and Miro make collaborating with other designers and organizing projects between multiple people a much more streamlined process.
There was also the issue of trying to share physical designs virtually, so collaborative platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have become essential throughout this transition. Although it may not have seemed like the ideal solution at the time, these platforms have actually made connecting with other people much easier than before — the fact that we are still utilizing these platforms to this day only reinforces their validity and usefulness.
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What is it like navigating the design job market in a virtual world?
Career fairs with massive crowds of people may be a thing of the past. Virtual career fairs, Zoom interviews, and networking through sites like Linkedin are on the rise. Some companies are even offering remote internships to compensate for the situation we have found ourselves in. We have had to design our backgrounds, make sure our top halves look professional, and learn a whole new way of interviewing that has become commonplace, even after the return to in-person.
We may have created a new design ecosystem that did not exist before.
This new landscape has changed the way we think about design. Making connections remotely has forced designers to come up with new ways to learn, collaborate, and share ideas. This shift to virtual, however, may have been inevitable in our digital age — all of the new skills that we have had to adopt may be crucial to our future success within the design community.
In what ways did the shift to virtual impact your modes of designing? What kinds of things did we rarely ever see before that are becoming the norm now?
