I’m ultimately trying to become the most well rounded person I can be. With understanding the world around me, and creating things to add to it being my primary intellectual interests, I want no boundaries in my style of study and creation. My life philosophy of completeness have lead me first down the path of an electrical engineering undergraduate, and now a mechanical design masters. This semester, I’m trying to not only do my best in my classes, which are primarily project based, I’m trying to learn welding, machining and carbon fiber crafting. FEA is also a goal.

With blossoming skill in electrical and mechanical design, as well as the ability to build electronics and devices, I’m hoping to be very versatile at work. I’m hoping this flexibility will keep me from getting bored. To avoid being bored, I want to work on a lot of different things, probably at the same time. Product design has a lot of appeal because not only is there a lot to be done, people have to be understood and needs assessed.

In taking this class, I’m looking to advance the way that I think about appearance as a human and engineering factor. Obviously, things that look nice are preferable to things that don’t. However, what looks nice is different to everyone. Aesthetics are a product of personal identity, trends and probably other things. Also, looking nice shouldn’t come at too much penalty to usability. Sometimes it is inevitable, but I really think that any design decision made for appearance reasons should try to completely justify itself in usability.

Furthermore, aesthetics and trends are in my opinion, largely the product of technology. If one is trying to make a marketable product, whether it’s useful or sold as art, the appearance is ultimately dictated by medium. The manufacturing process can definitely be thought of as a medium. I’m exploring 1990s aesthetics as the focus of my final project, and definitely see that  novel and primitive computer aided design definitely underlies a lot of what they were doing in the 90s.

I’m hoping that developing a versatile mind will help me pull disparate information together, solving problems and asking questions in ways that have not been done before.  I hope that this not only continues to be inherently enjoyable, but also allows me to improve my life and others.