Sidestep: For the Engineer Who's Really a Designer, What to do Next

Smart, creative, mechanically-inclined. Likes to take things apart, modify them, put them back together. Had to be forcibly removed from the Lego pile at dinner time as a child. Has to be forcibly removed from the Lego pile as an adult. Watches construction sites the way fans watch football games. These are the hallmarks of a natural-born engineer, right?

Possibly. The combination of interests and abilities described above is not uncommon in kids and teenagers, and though they might indicate a predilection for engineering, they could just as easily describe a latent artist, architect, programmer or industrial designer. Distinguishing between them is a difficult task for parents, counselors or confused students, and this can end up producing a working engineer or recent graduate with the dull, sinking feeling that they've spent the best years of their life struggling up the wrong professional ladder.

Engineering is an exacting, rewarding field with a strong creative element and a deep awareness of the utility and usefulness of physical objects in human society; in these ways it resembles Industrial Design. It is also fundamentally wary of emotional and aesthetic considerations, and often eschews novelty in favor of predictability and repeatability; in these ways it can prove frustrating to those who yearn for a more directly expressive act. Shifting to Industrial Design is one way in which some misplaced engineers have found resolution.

Such a career move has much to recommend it. Much of an engineer's skill set, for example, applies beautifully to ID. Materials and process knowledge is always useful to a product designer, along with other technical aspects of manufacturing. An underlying comprehension of structure is invaluable too, and many engineers find they have a real knack for aesthetic decision making, due to their ingrained allegiance to structural efficiency. Indeed, some of the most visually compelling structures of the modern world were designed by non-designers: see the work of Santiago Calatrava or Gustave Eiffel--both engineers--whose exuberant, magnificent structures are direct manifestations of structural necessity. The physically oriented engineering fields--civil, structural, and especially mechanical--are the most obvious candidates, but EEs and CEs with real world electronics experience can bring a similarly useful perspective to design projects.

By all accounts, the transition's not an easy one. There are new skills and work flows to master, many of which run counter to engineering conventions. The most obvious may also be the most problematic: ID is a visual field, and visual communication skills are crucial. Hand sketching ability is a non-negotiable necessity, as important to industrial design as writing is to journalism. Many designers have been drawing non-stop since childhood, so an engineer with little experience has much catching up to do. The difficulty can be overstated though: there are successful designers with only moderate sketching ability, often augmenting it with fluency in 2D digital manipulation (Illustrator, Photoshop, Painter, Corel Draw, Flash, etc) or 3D CAD. Learning how to work in a "sketch" mindset may ultimately prove the more difficult task--regardless of medium, rapidly moving through multiple, potentially unworkable solutions can feel sloppy or unnatural after the rigors of engineering school.

The consensus among engineers who've successfully made the switch, and the designers who work with them, is that going back to school in some capacity is requisite, at least enough to get the hang of the design process. A full undergraduate degree at an accredited college is probably the most effective; it means getting thrown into drawing, modeling and process classes with a few cocky 19-year-olds obsessed with shoes and cars, but if a complete shift of mindset is the goal, there's no better way. In many cases, a prior engineering degree will satisfy enough general education and technical requirements that the program can be completed in only 3 years.

A graduate degree is a viable option as well, and usually implies professors and coursework geared toward students with professional experience. These programs tend to aim at producing good design managers, research-driven innovators and multi-disciplinary professionals though, so the engineer who dreams of days spent at the drawing board, cranking out hot renderings of beautifully-styled consumer goods might do better to look at the undergraduate option.

If going back to school full time is not an option, it is certainly possible to learn visual communication skills through a well-executed combination of night classes, distance learning, independent practice and professional networking, though this is a much slower option with little exposure to the iterative process that distinguishes a good designer from a talented draftsman. Unfortunately, few schools offer ID-oriented classes in a continuing education format (and those that do, such as Parsons, Pratt and ArtCenter, do so in a very limited capacity), so more commonly available courses often have to substitute: perspective and life drawing, sculpture, graphic design, 3D CAD and web design classes are all applicable, but often too general. A number of books and DVDs offer more specific advice (search Amazon, Gnomon Workshop, and the Core77 Resources list), but no combination of these will build an ID toolbox as quickly or effectively as a dedicated program.

What they may build, however, is a skill set that combines with an engineering background to create a strange and potentially useful hybrid beast: the "engineer who can draw." Visual expression is an unusual skill outside the creative disciplines, and while it impresses those who never learned it, it also constitutes a separate language of sorts. This can make the transmission of design ideas from those who develop them to those who implement them rough and unpredictable, a perpetual source of grief among product design teams. In this environment, properly utilized, a "bi-lingual" design engineer can be a tremendous asset, able to see both sides of the debate that sometimes arises between the creative and pragmatic ends of the development process, and to communicate both conceptually and concretely.

It's often been remarked that the most crucial knowledge workers of the next decade will have job titles that haven't been invented yet, often through unexpected combinations of existing competencies. With the ever expanding popularity of "design thinking" in just about every aspect of business these days, a hybrid profession such as engineer/designer could be a perfect fit for companies seeking to incorporate such thinking into their process. The best path for an engineer frustrated by lack of creative input might be to move completely into the field of design. For many others, though, a happy medium could turn out to be both easier and more useful.