Discovering Pathways to New Career Aspirations
My time as an Industrial Design Intern at the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy was nothing short of amazing, from the project I completed to the people I met and got to know, and all the personal developments in between. There are so many good things I have to say - I’m not entirely sure where to begin.
The Project
Before the internship began, I selected an individual project with an aim to improve the motorbike riding experience by exploring emerging technologies. Another intern, Jake Day, also selected the same project which was great as we shared a lot of our research and had countless discussions and brainstorming sessions with each other. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to talk to someone from BMW Motorrad and discuss the topic of our research as well as our final design directions. This was invaluable as they provided real, genuine insight into the project from their professional perspective - on top of sharing about their own work. This was my first experience meeting someone professionally to present my work outside of a ‘presentation’ setting which was good practice for developing my interpersonal skills and effectively communicating what I had been working on.
In terms of creating my final design beyond an initial concept, I was already confident with my visualisation and 3D modeling skills, however was eager to learn and use a program called Blender. I had a very vague imagination of what Blender was, and quickly realised how far off I was from the truth. It proved to have a difficult learning curve which was incredibly scary as I had limited time to model my design. But, this was the beginning of potential new career perspectives which I had no expectations for whatsoever.
To begin with, I learned so many things about Blender and also 3D work in general just from watching and talking to Tim (one of the Academy’s team members) while he was using it for Academy projects. If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have been so drawn to it in the first place. Everyone at the Academy went out of their way to ask me about what I wanted to get out of the internship, and to offer help or explanations for certain things. After talking about everything 3D, I was immediately intrigued by all the use-cases and types of 3D work which stem from programs such as Blender and took it upon myself to learn and practice in my own time at home. As I was learning the program, everyone at the Academy were extremely helpful and boosted my desire to keep learning. As of now, I am already feeling confident in the program, but even more so motivated to keep learning and developing my 3D skills as I have realised this whole world of different 3D applications and use-cases. It’s one of those things that I always knew of, but never quite gave any thought to - and I am glad I did.
I am proud of my final model, renders and even animation that I created for my final design. I got to apply newly learnt skills that I am eager to develop further towards a project which I have a genuine passion towards and believe in.
To Summarise
I dove into an interesting and relevant topic, took an independent direction based off my own findings, and developed a final concept that I am passionate for with help and insight from other professionals at the Academy as well as BMW Motorrad specifically.
I would not hesitate to continue this into the future if given the chance as it encompasses a lot of the things I’ve taken out of my degree as a designer. I would highly recommend all students to apply for an internship here, as they are able to apply their own skills, learn and develop new ones as they desire, and they would be working with a team of highly skilled, encouraging and inspiring people. You may have heard the saying, “your network is your net-worth”... the Academy is a network of people I am extremely grateful and happy to have been a part of.
I’d like to thank Jordan, Tim and Epi for their ongoing fun and welcoming attitudes since day one, and also their willingness to show, teach and even learn new things every day. I also want to thank Jake and Kilian (the other interns alongside myself) for all the discussions and feedback they gave throughout the internship, as well as their pro-active and inspiring attitudes towards their own work. And lastly, thank you to Rafael for providing the contact for Jake and I to talk with BMW Motorrad about our projects.
Thank you for reading,
James Boughen
BMW Group + QUT Design Academy Intern, Summer Semester 2022-23
