Engineer Your Life
Posted on October 4, 2008 Comments (1)
Engineer Your Life is an outreach initiative committed to sharing with college-bound young women the opportunities available to them in the world of engineering. Unfortunately they chose to use flash content and the website fails to follow simple usability guidelines (basic stuff like human readable urls, links that work without javascript…) but there is decent content. The use of flash and failing to pay attention to usability are highly correlated in my experience. The site profiles 12 engineers including Judy Lee:
Designing for IKEA
Judy began her new project by thinking about the way kids play. “I realized that kids today play indoors a lot. Maybe because the world seems a little more dangerous and parents are more protective. So I knew that this mat had to incorporate some kind of physical play element.” Rather than a static mat, Judy designed one resembling a giant lazy Susan that kids could spin around on. “Once I had the concept, the mechanical engineer in me took over. I needed something simple. Simplicity is awesome. My mat is basically two injection-molded pieces of plastic that spin on a set of interior wheels.”
Judy will never forget the experience of seeing her mat in an IKEA store. “It was incredible,” she recalls, “and it was such important validation for me that my ideas matter, they’re good, and they’re marketable.”
Dream Job at IDEO
Today, Judy has found her dream job in Palo Alto, California, at a company called IDEO, one of the country’s most innovative design firms. IDEO hires engineers, designers, psychologists, and businesspeople who work in teams to develop cutting-edge products (they created Apple Computer’s first mouse, for example). Judy designs children’s toys, pet products, and packaging for over-the-counter drugs and food. “I feel pretty lucky to have such a creative and interesting job. I’m surrounded by brilliant people. It doesn’t really seem like work. It’s just plain fun!”
Related: Beloit College: Girls and Women in Science – Women Choosing Other Fields Over Engineering and Math – NASA You Have a Problem – Girls Sweep Top Honors at Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology – Women Working in Science – other posts on poor usability
Categories: Engineering, K-12, Students
Tags: Boston, Career, engineering education, engineers, K-12, mechanical engineering, poor usability, usability
One Response to “Engineer Your Life”
Leave a Reply
October 13th, 2008 @ 11:48 am
Thanks for the post. I think its a shame when people think of the engineering world as a male dominated. Women are just as capable as men as Judy has proved.