The Importance of Compromise in Design (and also life)

After nearly four years of pursuing my industrial design degree, I realized that I picked up a lot of values that did not only helped me improve my skills as a designer but also shaped who I am as an individual. The biggest takeaway for me was learning how to compromise between what I think is ideal and what is realistic, both in design and in life.

My Ideals

I don’t want to be cliché, but since I was young I’ve always wanted to be a designer. In case you don’t believe me here is a picture from my elementary school yearbook, where I had written “designer” as my future job. Before I entered university, I constantly complained about traditional education and its lack of practicality. I grew tired of the routine of memorizing mathematical formulas and using them to solve fictional problems in exams that are nothing like problems I encounter in real life.

Meanwhile, I found more value in doing design commissions for my friends, family, and their acquaintances, both spiritually and financially, as I was able to witness the impact of my designs directly. I saw college as an avenue for me to create greater impacts through design, for instance, the idea that a product I designed could end up on a shelf in the store was just so cool to me. After a ton of googling I discovered the field of industrial design. I pushed through the standardized tests and college essays and somehow got accepted to Georgia Tech’s industrial design department. Seeing the admissions decision that day was one of the happiest days of my life because I thought I could finally dedicate all my time into pursuing what I love, and even better my passion would intersect with my source of income.

Coming to Terms with Reality

Soon, reality slapped me in the face. I came face-to-face with the reality of an international student on an F-1 visa with no STEM extension trying to land a design job in the United States. It felt almost impossible, job searching was already tough to begin with and requiring a visa sponsorship was just rubbing salt to the wound.

Moreover, industrial design students at Georgia Tech were known to spend hours of manual labor in the workshop and pulling all-nighters, only to graduate with an average salary significantly lower than our engineer counterparts. Because, there was the idea that designers can only make things look pretty while everyone else makes it work, which made me believe my design skills were worthless. I contemplated switching majors many times. The number of students collectively switching majors after the first year fed my confirmation bias and FOMO. I was convinced that pursuing a design career in the United States was unrealistic. However, after communicating my dilemma to my parents, we came to a consensus that I was in too deep and we did not want 1.5 years worth of out-of-state tuition going down the drain.

Finding the Balance

Now, looking back from where I am now, I do not regret a single thing. I found my sweet spot in user experience design, and had my digital designs ship out to production. I no longer spend hours in the workshop sanding foam models to perfection. At one point, I saw customers screenshot the app updates I designed and upload them to social media, without us asking them to. Witnessing the impact of my designs and fostering these genuine relationships with the target users was the best feeling. I am no longer worried about my salary or my visa, and I landed internships. Knowing that all the decisions I have made that led up to this point were calculated, I believe that if there is a will, then there is a way for my dreams and reality to coincide.

If I could talk to my past self or my juniors in industrial design who are reading this, I would tell them:

Take full advantage of your freedom as a design student

Being an industrial student, you are not confined by designing chairs and hand tools. If you do your research and expand your horizons, you’ll realize that there’s mixed reality design, design marketing, exhibit design, service design, and so many more areas of design you could explore and pursue for your future goals. Don’t let the constraints of your project prompts or fear of getting negative feedback from your professor limit you. Take this as a learning opportunity to communicate why your idea is valuable and make a compromise with the constraints.

Spending more time working doesn’t yield better results

I know that nobody looks back to the nights where they got enough sleep, I’ll always cherish the late nights I spend with my friends working at school. But you should keep in mind that just because you spent so much time on a project, doesn’t mean it’s going to add to the quality of your work. The college student culture of not taking care of yourself by only getting two hours of sleep and living off instant noodles make great memes but it’s not cool. When you realize you’re spending too much time on a project and not getting anywhere, take a step back and try to think if there’s a better way to go about the problem. Talk to your professors and peers for a different perspective. Learn to improve not just your work, but also your workflow.

The price of inaction is greater than the cost of making a mistake

It’s easy to feel like you’re wasting time when designing iteration after iteration since it’s essentially brute force. Know that failure is necessary for you to learn and validate your solution. A lot of roadblocks would come up like taking difficulty of implementation into consideration, disagreements with clients on product requirements, and long lists of unrelated insights from user interviews. As a designer, you have a very important role in taking all of these things into consideration and it can be daunting. But if you’re just contemplating about all of these things in your head without putting these thoughts into something actionable, you’re wasting your time.

Everything is a compromise

Back to the original point, a big part of design and life is compromising between what’s ideal and what’s realistic. Know your value as a designer and don’t discount your skills just because you cannot make a working prototype. Designers understand target users the best, which enables us to validate why this product needs to work in the first place. It is up to you to come up with the ideal experience for the user, and you work together with people from different disciplines to turn your idea into reality. You argue how an aesthetic choice can increase the perceived value of a product while taking technology limitations into account. You validate why a page needs to be laid out a certain way and made it possible within existing company brand standards. There is no textbook or formula to help you make these decisions, which is why your journey and experience as a design student is so valuable.