Growing as a Designer

Participating in the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy Internship was a wonderful opportunity to develop an awesome project and grow my design skills. This semester I was the first BMW Group + QUT Design Academy Intern from a Games Design background. During this exciting opportunity I was able to work alongside talented people from other disciplines and real-world clients from the BMW Group.

The project my teammate Jordan and I worked on was awesome! The opportunity to create a gameplay experience challenged me and allowed me to rapidly develop my skills as a designer and teammate. I was required to use my most creative problem-solving skills to find the solution to problems that emerged in this project and this encouraged me to build my knowledge in different areas.

During this internship I developed my professional skillset in many unexpected ways as I was taken out of my comfort zone and utilised previously under-developed skills. I evolved both hard and soft skills such as technical design skills, communication and presenting techniques. Working for real world clients was a valuable experience as I had not previously completed a project where I was required to present ideas and concepts to clients and receive feedback at this level. It was an eye-opening experience and the clients helped me and my team mate to fully flesh out the concept in ways we could not have foreseen.

My mentors and the whole team from BMW Group + QUT Design Academy were super helpful in giving valuable insight and feedback on the nitty gritty details of the project. Much of my growth as a designer was from the team pushing me to succeed to the highest levels. I will forever take my experiences and skills I developed from this internship with me into my future career and I encourage anyone with the opportunity to take part in a project like this to GO FOR IT!

Thanks for reading,

Josh Tulleners
BMW Group + QUT Design Academy Intern, Semester 2 2021