Implementing Product Design Education to Start a Project
“A product design project begins a number of different ways,” says Alicia Tam Wei. “Sometimes it’s about something that annoys you. Sometimes it’s about something that’s a big dream of yours. Sometimes it’s about something that you wish existed. It’s often kind of like the ultimate wish fulfillment.”
Stephanie Mantis states, “I think it’s important to figure out why you’re doing something. So for me, oftentimes, my product development starts with a need, be it functional and physical, or emotional and more personal.” “First,” she continues, “identifying what am I trying to do and why, is an amazing place to start. If it’s your problem, it’s probably somebody else’s problem. And if your solution works for you, it probably works for somebody else.”
Mantis further explains, “When I graduated college, I kind of looked around my apartment, and I was like, ‘Oh, you’re a college graduate like maybe it’s time to upgrade some of your choices and fixtures.’ One of those things were my necklace racks, which at the time were literally thumbtacks in the wall. You know, there’s five or six of them. I said, ‘You can do better than this.’ I happened to have a collection of small plastic animals on my bookshelf. I looked at them, and I said, ‘Sorry guys, but I’m going to cut your heads off and mount them to a piece of wood.’ That kind of touch upon what was happening at the time with an animal trophy trend. And that’s how my first product post-graduation was born. And that is the pack rack.”
Online product design education reiterates the importance of producing an organic and believable product. “It became this sort of organic situation where I’ve had this problem and decided to make my own solution. Over the course of time, I refined that solution so that it would be producible, and scalable, and sellable,” Stephanie Mantis concludes.
