Abstract
Each year, university industrial design (ID) programs in the United States produce recent graduates who majored in industrial design, yet the number of available entry-level roles in industrial design remains relatively low, which presents a barrier for all students. However, many recent graduates have pursued other career pathways in fields related to industrial design. The “ID Pathways” project shares the stories of 7 recent graduates leveraging their industrial design skills in various professional roles, such as digital marketing, product engineering, and strategy consulting. In 7 individual virtual interviews, these recent graduates reflected upon their academic experiences in classes and studio projects and rated core design competencies to identify academic outcomes important to their career growth. After each interview, the recent graduates participated in a visual exercise to find online images and write prompts to produce AI-generated mockups to inspire the “ID Pathways” website. They generated a series of AI-produced images and chose one to represent their conceptual idea for how the website could function and appear. “ID Pathways” is directed toward current students, who can explore the recent graduates’ stories and proposed resources to guide their future career exploration.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.071
Citation
Bhattacharya, K.(2025) Industrial Design Pathways: Storytelling from Recent Graduates, in Clemente, V., Gomes, G., Reis, M., Félix, S., Ala, S., Jones, D. (eds.), Learn X Design 2025, 22-24 September 2025, Aveiro, Portugal. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.071
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Visual Submission
Industrial Design Pathways: Storytelling from Recent Graduates
Each year, university industrial design (ID) programs in the United States produce recent graduates who majored in industrial design, yet the number of available entry-level roles in industrial design remains relatively low, which presents a barrier for all students. However, many recent graduates have pursued other career pathways in fields related to industrial design. The “ID Pathways” project shares the stories of 7 recent graduates leveraging their industrial design skills in various professional roles, such as digital marketing, product engineering, and strategy consulting. In 7 individual virtual interviews, these recent graduates reflected upon their academic experiences in classes and studio projects and rated core design competencies to identify academic outcomes important to their career growth. After each interview, the recent graduates participated in a visual exercise to find online images and write prompts to produce AI-generated mockups to inspire the “ID Pathways” website. They generated a series of AI-produced images and chose one to represent their conceptual idea for how the website could function and appear. “ID Pathways” is directed toward current students, who can explore the recent graduates’ stories and proposed resources to guide their future career exploration.