Is your dream job designing at Apple?
The Video iPod, HDTVs, digital cameras, cell phones�all things being equal, would you up and leave your current job for an opportunity to design the latest cool, high-profile gadgets? In a Consumer Electronics Forum I recently moderated, component manufacturer representatives discussed and debated product and design trends in that market, and much of the time was spent talking about glamorous products like those mentioned.
Designing high-profile consumer products may seem like the dream job, but working in less-visible sectors can offer just as many, if not more, rewards and challenges.
Interesting and impressive stuff? No doubt about it. Some of the developments in the consumer sector are jaw dropping. But I also believe that the success of those products has as much to do with creative marketing campaigns as it does with innovative and functional designs.
When taken at face value, it seems that a job designing products for that sector would offer a tremendously rewarding experience�an exciting and challenging opportunity that any design engineer would jump at. Who wouldn't want to see their design in a product being used and enjoyed by millions of people?
My guess is, however, that most of you aren't involved in designing the latest devices to hit the shelves at Circuit City just in time for Christmas. But that doesn't mean designers working on projects in less-visible sectors aren't being challenged and stimulated every day by the designs they're creating. In fact, theirs may be a more interesting journey compared to the designer who tweaks a cell-phone design every couple of months.
Is it less rewarding to design a blood-glucose analyzer than a new gaming console? Does figuring out the most efficient way to control the motors in an HVAC unit pale in comparison with fitting a motorized zoom lens into a camera cell phone? Is a solar-energy power-conversion system less intriguing or important than a system that converts an analog audio signal to MP3 digital?
It's easy to point to the iPod or Razr V3 cell phone as awesome developments in technology, and to conclude that the engineers involved are geniuses. But there are many more products out there being designed to offer solutions for the problems we, as consumers, encounter every day. They may fly under the radar as far as public adulation and recognition, but their designers are superstars just the same.
Designs both great and small have the capacity to change the world every day. It all depends upon your�the engineer's�imagination.
Ralph Raiola
Editor
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