Nate L.

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Ha ha ha damn it

So I wrote a big long post for the next entry a while back and then saved it as a draft to finish later. Invariably when I came to finish it I couldn’t find it for the life of me, and after a while of googling completely useless instructions I found a site that allows you to HACK THE PLANET Tumblr directly into your drafts account.

Turns out it never saved the draft.

Awesome.

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No Sleep till Laramie

I took a few videos of a really impressive and frightening prairie thunderstorm that they get all the time there but scares the bejeezus out of pampered coaster millennial such as myself that I ran into the leading edge of somewhere near the Wyoming-Nebraska border, but it ended up coming out completely unviewable so nuts, I guess. Anyway, I took a chance (and read the weather radar - I’m not quite that stupid) and skirted to the north of the storm on my way to Cheyenne. I got to the Radisson sometime around midnight, or at least that’s when you lose yourself for a minute or two. Either way, it was good time to check out for the night - I could tell I was getting tired and I’d already put in about thirteen hours of mirthless, hopeless driving across the beating, repetitive, corn-overloaded heart of America.

The Radisson in Cheyenne’s an impressively large building, and has a nice balance of affordability and lack of demerits, which is something that Cheyenne hotels seem to struggle with. At about a hundred dollars for a night it would push my budget, but at least it wasn’t the place where it’s apparently accepted that the owner will occasionally break in to see if there’s anything worth stealing, like this was FFVI. Anyway, in said impressively large building is what may be the largest lobby in Wyoming, dominated by a big fireplace that I can’t find any good pictures of online, because sometimes the Internet sucks, and that time is all the time.

Anyway, I walked into the lobby, which looked even larger when most of the lights were off, and asked what kind of rooms were still available.

There weren’t any rooms left, the receptionist told me. In the city.

The Radisson in Cheyenne has about two hundred eighty units, and while it’s the largest in the city, Cheyenne has about thirty-one hotels. That means that there were reasonably at least a few thousand people staying in Cheyenne for that night. Which really begs the question of Why? which you can bet that I was asking myself at a little after midnight. So I did the only thing I could, and if you think this posting was called Comfortable Sleep at a Three-Star Hotel tlil Laramie, then you have severe memory problems and should consult a doctor before you finish this post and forget about it.

So anyway, Laramie is about a forty-five minute drive from Cheyenne, and I figure that, like in Illinois, if it comes down to it I could stop along the way at one of the many tiny towns that sport a Microtel and a Travelodge and possibly a collection of cinder blocks that occasionally house a family of stray cats.

Here’s a few statistics about Laramie: Laramie, Wyoming, is the seat of Albany County, and holds a little over 30,000 people, population-wise. Albany County, Wyoming, has a population of about 32,000 people, based on the most recent census data.

Needless to say, there was nothing. The entire way. Offramps with hopeful sounding names shot off into complete darkness in the moonscape of the American upper steppe. At some point 80 enters some hills between the cities, and I found my bleary, weary self attempting to negotiate grades of up to six percent. By halfway down I was driving sixty because I didn’t want to risk my own reaction times at anything higher.

But I did make it to Laramie. It crept into view, all lights and promise, and I made my way to a well-regareded local motel in the center of town. Which was closed. So I made my way to the less well-regarded but still-probably-not-going-to-give-me-bedbugs Motel 8 at the edge of town near the highway. Despite being about thirty years out of date, they did have rooms available, and they gave me this:

I double-checked, and it is indeed 2016. I’ve been taking care of my hotel arrangements for the past decade and used to travel for work so much that I hit Super Diamond Chaos Emerald Plus with Choice Hotels, but I’d never seen such a thing in that entire time. Since my family did travel growing up I do vaguely remember rooms with keys from when I was about six, but it took going to Laramie to see such a thing myself.

I am easily amused, is what I’m saying.

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Somewhere in Middle America

Pittsburgh! Or as close as 80 gets to it, unfortunately.

The mighty Mississippi, or “Timing is Everything”.

Omaha, marking my halfway point across the US. It’s bigger in person. At least I was able to get that cord out of the front of the camera mount this time.

Somewhere in, uh, Nebraska? I took this shot at the gas station/Arby’s combo (seems appropriate) because my sister really likes cows. No, I don’t know why either.

Cozad, NE, which at least has a grocery store. And a grain silo, I guess. I probably should have, I don’t know, walked to the other side of that fence.

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I left Illinois no trouble, and managed to cross the Mississippi River early in the day. What followed was a trip through Iowa and Nebraska that can best be described as “that happened”.

And now, a presentation of my journey in real time.

(Just repeat this video for eight hours straight)

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Can’t escape Indiana

It was smooth sailing - sort of - until western Indiana.

Granted, part of that was because I did manage to realize that the metal hook on my bike’s front wheel was all that was keeping said wheel from falling off in mid-transit and delivering itself through somebody’s windshield, but I got through four hours of driving without killing anyone so maybe it was fine? No, I didn’t think so either. But anyway, having fixed that and partially mitigated my laundry basket being an asshole, I did manage to only take several hours’ worth of stops through the rest of Pennsylvania and all of Ohio. The trouble began around - aw hell, I have no idea where. It was in Indiana. Somewhere. Probably the middle bit. The road closed to one lane and everyone just sort of lost it at that point. I was able to jump an exit a half mile in, then detoured as my navigation computer launched a series of cusses my way, which I deflected by keeping it on mute, which probably just made it angrier. Its idea of a detour is doing the exact same thing you already have been doing though, which if you’ll note is the exact opposite of a detour. So I rejoin the road and get slammed with another lane closure, and traffic is straight up stopped. And with this being the Thruway, there’s no exit for five miles. So I lost maybe an hour there, a lot of it sitting around havin’ fun in the sun. Then I get to Gary, where the real fun started. Highway has too many dang cars. I guess headed to Chicago or something, so I went south to Ridge (so many damn roads named Ridge, I’ve had at least three in my last four moves) and start heading west. And heading west. And heading west. Apparently traffic is so bad that I couldn’t get on before Hammond! Terrific. I had some other stuff happen but I’ll have to tell you about it later, I am so damn tired right now.

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Day 1: Through to ????

I ended up doing so much packing and repacking that I managed to make it to a few miles short of Pittsburgh before crashing for the night. Maybe that’s not the best term to use. Anyhow, aside from that lackluster previous post which I apparently forgot to even title, it was mostly just traveling through the night. Stopping at Wegmans for a final meal was sort of the high point of the trip.

Interesting tidbit: apparently hotels in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania start filling up in summer, to the point that I had to stop at like three different hotels to find a place with vacancy. Felt pretty drained after everything. Such a mess, while it’s nice to be heading home after twelve years, I didn’t spend that time pining to be out west again. Considering that virtually everyone I know lives in the east, it’s been a rough pill to swallow. Maybe I’ll feel better once I’m actually in California, I don’t know.

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Pictured:

The last Wawa’s hoagie????

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Westward Ho

So after twelve years of East Coast living, said East Coast has told me in no uncertain terms to get fucked and beat it. No worries, I can roll with the punches. Or, to put it as I’ve been saying for the past month or so, “AAAAARGH”. Anyway, I found a job in California one town over from where I grew up, go figure, so I’m moving out today and heading back home. Hardly good circumstances and I hate that I’m having to lean on my parents so much for this, but you know, this is the Survival Economy that the people Newsweek or Time or whoever were so excited to predict a few years back.

Anyhow, I’m having the car fixed up with some new tires (because I shouldn’t have been driving down the street to Wawa’s on what I had before, much less crossing the entirety of North America), and while I should be moving boxes downstairs right now, I need a rest. It’s already been a hell of a day. U-haul installed my hitch, but the time jumped from 8:45 to 11:00 apparently (having previously jumped from 7 to 5:00 next friggin’ Tuesday to noon today to said 8:45) and I had to spend the time idle at the nearby mall. Then because I wasn’t able to get the tires done earlier I had to find someone to do it and apparently today is National Car Maintenance Day here or something, so now I don’t know if I’ll get going before six or seven or even later because moving sucks. And I still need to drive to Cleveland!

Oh well. Stay tuned for more of me driving. Hopefully somewhere out of the city before next week starts.

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Just putting it out there

So I graduated a week ago, sooooo if anyone happens across this and needs an industrial designer or something, you know, message me.

I am so bored right now.

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The Importance of Reading Closely

We’re going to have a brief discussion about the difference between Friday and Saturday:

Friday is a different day than Saturday. Don’t confuse them.

See, I did that and managed to miss the IDSA meeting at Bresslergroup on Friday, because Friday is not Saturday and I’m just glad that I double-checked that email when I was in my car, ready to drive downtown on Saturday at five because that would have been awkward when I got there.

Since I missed last week’s post due to getting stuck in the same ridiculous project that I managed to miss this Friday’s first event over (project wasn’t stressful enough so they somehow managed to make it due on both Wednesday morning and Sunday - no, too lenient, make that Friday at five) I was hoping to combine my comments about our trip to Blue Cadet, but that didn’t pan out so let me just recap the Blue Cadet trip:

So while Blue Cadet is a UX firm rather than involved in industrial design, they talked to us at lengths about their design process, which I think is universally helpful. Aspects of their progression towards a goal is a process that can be adapted to physical products in the same way that Blue Cadet uses it for their site design (keeping in mind the differences between progression through a website and features on a product or series of products). This is more true, I think, of their projects that had a more physical aspect to it - namely their work in Bethlehem - as opposed to those that were entirely virtual, if only because their physical properties can’t directly interact with the users. Blue Cadet’s installations are about conveying information to a user - that’s what their product “does” for the people who interact with it - and while industrial design involves working with a diverse range of things that do a diverse range of things for their users, informing a user is nearly always part of it, and features of a product are like features of an information system - with hierarchies, importance, and varied ultimate conclusions that differ from product to product.

I asked about their approach to aesthetics, and they approach each project mostly based on the context of the situation they’re working in. For examples, for the Bethlehem project they used a number of industrial steel placards filled with information, whereas their interface in their National Air and Space Museum was modeled after particles suspended in the air.

We saw the Air and Space museum installation in person, which brought up another important point - accessibility. Blue Cadet talked about the design challenges they faced in making the thing accessible as necessary to reach ADA standards, and how they keep each particle within the range of someone who is bound to a wheelchair. It was interesting to note how even a user interface is impacted by accessibility concerns, which of course is even more of an issue for us in Industrial Design.

Anyway, it was a useful trip altogether (which makes me wish I had been able to attend last Friday’s as well) and I hope to see what Knoll has to show us today, assuming I haven’t confused this with Wednesday.

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Job Progression Early April

So I didn’t see any particular assignment crop up for this week’s blog entry and inadvisedly decided not to worry about it too much. But then in the car today on my way to the hardware store I realized that I still need to post about my job hunting progress. Whoops. So let’s talk about the job expo.

Long story short, I have almost a hundred fairly mediocre business cards to get rid of at this point. They don’t really come in lots smaller than that, unfortunately, and I didn’t really have much time to make a design that I was really proud of - Someone else in my class mentioned she was getting some printed about two days before and I jumped on the idea. Unfortunately when you have two days to make a business card your business card ends up looking like it was made in two days.

<- Insert the business card scene from American Psycho here ->

But enough about that - I got to the athletic center and stood in line with everyone else, past the trick desk set up for employers and to create the illusion of brevity. It stretched the entire length of the center about twice.

The line waiting to see Santa Claus stretched all the way back to Terre Haute. And I was at the end of it.

Once I was in, I got a nameplate and a bright red folder with the list of attending employers and a list telling me... that I had no scheduled interviews. Swell. Seeing some of my classmates there, I spoke to them and was at least relieved to hear that most of them didn’t get any either, so we were all going down together, save for two overachievers.

It wasn’t that surprising, probably, since there were only about six companies there looking for industrial designers anyway, and of those some were only looking for seasonal interns. But it wasn’t that huge a deal for me, since I needed to finish printing out some of the pages for my portfolio. I made it back in time for the open interview segment, and spoke with some employers during that segment. Not all of them: Armstrong Ceiling was very popular and favored long interviews, while the people from Boomerang USA seemed to just skip the whole thing.

For one example, a glass company I spoke to was looking for ID majors but to my disappointment appears to work more in restoring glass and coordinating glass construction rather than designing architectural glass pieces, but they needed someone good at AutoCAD, which I certainly fit the bill on. My feelings about how that interview went are mixed.

I also spoke to a rep from a construction-oriented architectural firm near the end because there was nobody there. They weren’t looking for ID students, but due to my mech engineering background I think she was at least somewhat interested in seeing if I could help them with their site planning workload. Since I barely chose ID over Architecture when I first applied here I could live with that.

So we’ll see what comes out of this. I sent thank yous the day after, but it could be a month or so before anything happens based on the interviews, if anything ever happens, which might well place the results beyond the scope of this blog.

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My Story

Okay, so this is a little late - I had thought I’d done this at the beginning of the semester - but I’d like to get this together ASAP in preparation for the job expo on the 31st. So here it is:

My name is Nate Lindner, I’m a graduate student in Industrial Design finishing my capstone project at the end of this semester. As a student here, I’ve taken the opportunity to work on commercially viable projects for clients such as Johnson & Johnson and the Autodesk foundation. Before my time here as a student, I worked as an engineer for Philips Electronics and Kingsbury Corporation and as a contractor for Corning. My undergraduate degree from Rochester Institute of Technologies in electrical-mechanical engineering technology gave me the opportunity to work as an intern in a large field of industries, including manufacturing and utilities, and my professional roles have had me work on everything from electrical controls to architectural planning. I’m working now to land a position at a firm specializing in consumer product or interiors design.

Right now that clocks in at about 50 seconds, so I’m trying to pare it down to 30 without sacrificing any clarity of intention.

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Presentation at Bresslergroup

So we had a visit at design firm Bresslergroup this Tuesday (3/22) at their headquarters in downtown Philadelphia.

Because I’m terrible at pathfinding and so is my navigation computer, I managed to miss the part of the Bresslergroup visit that involved looking around their facilities and all the (presumably) cool stuff they do. I was, however, able to see the presentation that Bill and Dan gave for us afterwards.

The presentation mostly focused around the design process and was divided into four parts, breaking down the important aspects of both product development and the product itself.

There was a strong focus on making sure that they, as designers, had a clear understanding of what a product under design would do - not necessarily in the “actions” sense so much as in the sense of having an understanding of how what they were designing would come across to the user: there’s important differences between things that do what the customer wants and expects and is likeable and relateable versus something that does what it should but doesn’t provoke a positive emotion out of the user versus something that looks intriguing but ultimately lacks the functionality that the user expects of it. While, of course, they designed things to fall in the “fashionable and functional” category, if given the choice between the latter two, they indicated that (perhaps against the perception of what a stereotypical design firm does) would pick making a device that does what people want it to do. They explained that in some depth by talking about the importance of the fact that today’s consumers are connected - with the Internet at our disposal, any shopper can get information on a product they’re viewing - and with smartphones and the like, no longer just when they’re shopping online - and discover previous purchasers’ experiences with it after they took it home. A thing that failed to live up to its promise, then, can be investigated by someone in a store immediately, and that person will move on.

That’s not to say that aesthetics aren’t considered important. Another point they talked about was the impact of the unboxing experience, and how that first encounter with a product needed to create a positive and memorable emotional response in the purchaser. It’s a small aspect that would be easy to overlook for an industry outsider but which contributes that much to making a product inspire loyalty in a customer.

As far as employment tips went, some useful points came up during the Q&A portion of the visit: on the topic of portfolios, Bill mentioned the importance of having a good variety of material in one’s portfolio entries. Specifically, having nothing but finished views of finished products and their boards isn’t terribly endearing or useful to a potential ID employer; a solid portfolio contains projects with all states of development visible, from the earliest sketches through to the end with plenty of steps along the way. He particularly seemed to emphasize the importance of sketchwork, and identified it as a good sign to employers that a person is capable of quickly jotting down ideas without the slowing and belaboring process of translating thoughts into a CAD model.

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Job Search: Recent Progress

So I’ve been up to a number of things trying to keep up with the job race, not the least of which because I could really use a job right about now. As I mentioned in “This Coming Semester etc.”, I’ve had a multi-tier plan to stick to and to be honest I’ve stuck to it even better than I was sort of expecting. To wit:

I’ve re-formed my resume based on current industry standards and had it approved for the Philau online job portal. It’s still a bit plain for my taste though, but with the career expo looming in ten days I’m a bit loathe to screw with it.

I’ve begun to send out job applications. Not too many yet and this is an area where I’m a bit behind schedule, but I’ve started to submit applications to nearby companies.

I took the most valuable projects that I did last semester and have updated my portfolio with them. I’m currently still using Behance to host it; I’d like to take out a domain in my name (something like natelindner.net if that’s even possible) but currently am under a heavy financial crunch.

My LinkedIn account was languishing (I still had my old workplace listed as my current job, which I had thought I’d fixed already) until now; I’ve replaced a lot of old information and added in new entries based on my current status, as well as a link to my portfolio in my profile. Beyond that I’ve increased my connections by submitting more connection requests to my classmates and other people I’ve worked with since moving to Philadelphia.

I don’t consider any stage in this process to be totally “complete” just yet, but I am confident enough in what I have changed and done to continue to send out job applications and resumes. In particular, I’m looking to get contact information inside the design field in the near future, which will be the “step beyond” my current job hunting activities. I’m also looking to prepare for the career expo and need to brush up my elevator speech - the expo will probably be my biggest career concern for the next week and a half.

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Responses for “The Good Interview”

“Tell me a little about yourself:”

I’m currently finishing my master’s degree in industrial design, which I got into after spending four years in mechanical and electrical engineering and drafting, which is what I earned my undergraduate degree in at Rochester Institute of Technology. I worked for a number of companies while attending RIT under their co-op program, and between the year and a half I spent as an intern and the four years I spent in industry afterwards, I’ve done a number of roles, including drafting, civil planning, product and product envelope design, architectural modifications, and site planning.

“Describe one of your weaknesses (1):”

I struggle with communication. Unfortunately it’s not something that naturally comes easy to me That’s why I took a minor in applied communication - because it would challenge me, and just as importantly because it would help me overcome my natural difficulties with it.

“Describe one of your weaknesses (2):”

Beyond my own affinities for detail, I’ve trained and worked extensively as a drafter, where attentiveness is critical. As a bit of a side effect, my attention to detail can border on disruptive sometimes. I’ve found that it helps when I make sure that my current responsibilities are clear - so if I find myself taking too long in one area, I can jump to another task I need to work on, to clear my head while remaining productive.

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This Coming Semester in Preview

I’ve been asked to lay out an ultimate goal for this semester in regards to my career, and I’ve put some thought into it. At this point, with me coming close to graduating from a master’s program, I’m looking to start working. And since I already have a few year’s worth of internships and work experience to my name, I’d like to skip over any more internships and move directly to a career, if possible. So to put this into a multi-tier plan for the next two months:

Goal:

I’d like to score no less than three job interviews by the end of the semester in mid-April, and ideally I’d like at least five.

Plan: 

I’ll need to submit a number of resumes - potentially up to 45 - to reach that goal. This will require me to update my current resume (which is factually accurate but fairly uninspired) and my portfolio, which I need to populate with my projects from last semester and reevaluate in general. Once that is ready, I’ll need to determine who to send resumes to, and then do so on a rolling basis throughout the rest of the semester or until I achieve a possible job.

Steps:

February has just started. I want to re-work my resume to be more appealing for the industrial design job market over the next two weeks.

Concurrently, I need to update my portfolio. I’ll be working on that at the same time as the resume, and I hope to get it fully updated within three weeks or by the end of the month at worst.

I want to start soliciting my resume as soon as I think that’s acceptable, which might mean that I have to start sending my portfolio before that’s totally at a state which I’d consider “done”, but due to the time involved in sending resumes and hearing responses, it will probably be at least partly necessary.

I have to determine who to submit resumes to. The school has some offerings and also hosts the career fair this semester, but a lot of my search will probably be out to various job sites.

I’ll have to look at who I know. I’m almost certain that I don’t know any professional industrial designers outside of my academic sphere, but I can audit my contacts listings (and maybe remember about my LinkedIn profile after all these years).

Actions:

For next week, going through my resume again. It needs to be made more appealing.

Also for next week, taking a look at where my portfolio is right now.

In the next two weeks, update my portfolio with Fall 2015.

By the end of the month, re-work my entire portfolio.

At the end of the next two weeks, begin to mail updated resume and portfolio (whatever state it’s in).

Investigate the career fair and who will be participating.

Begin to identify and mail possible employers.

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Entrepreneurship - Presentation from last week (1/26)

From the presentation on Entrepreneurship, two different sections: Ideation and a brief description of entrepreneur Daniel Fine (from speaking engagement 1/22/16), both intended to be about one minute of presentation material.

On ideation:

Ideas occur for any aspect of the world.

Ideas forms the core of an entrepreneur's startup - The idea of the startup drives its breakout product; the response of the public determines success or failure of the startup.

Entrepreneurs don’t have to be the ones who come up with the idea - but it is critical that they understand what it takes to successfully transform the idea into a useful product.

Ideas are almost always based on experience - direct or indirect; drawn from any past impressions about some unfulfilled need.

On Daniel Fine:

Licensing market is 40 billion a year

Glass-U earned licensing rights fastest in history

Co-promote products with licensees to make selling easier

Use of campus reps to promote and sell the product individually, locally

Made over 100k at UPenn in 2015Rights to licensing for over 700 schools

Focused entirely on licensing first and then moved to retail (Target etc)

Not sunglasses company, licensing and distribution company

Reached retail by lots of calls, questions, and help

Went to lots of licensing trade shows

Lots of travel, networking

Entrepreneurship takes a lot of grind

Believe in the product

The products is secondary to the network (in value)

World Cup deal made almost no money but was great for getting name out

Don’t stop

The central idea for ideation was, I felt, summed up neatly in the bolded bit. Regarding what Daniel Fine said, I would say that his most central point was that the network of sponsors and customers that an entrepreneur builds when developing and marketing a product is worth just as much as, if not more than, the money made selling the product itself.