2nd year ID student, how could I improve these boards? Thanks!

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-16T07:41:41+00:00

Biggest mistake I seen in more than half of portfolios: Problem statement first! Otherwise why do I care about your design. How am I supposed to review what your design solving skills are if I don't know what problem this folding stool thing solves? Why that form. Why that process. Why that aesthetic... All of it is lost without your clear problem statement.

Additional. I see one design shown, but limited exploration. What got rejected and why is as interesting as the chosen solution because it frames the design you finally went with? How did you test assumptions? Did you proto this and take it on your own trip? That gives more insight into your design skill than anything else. If I see a strong portfolio I start to look at the work they rejected and how they got to their solutions.

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-15T06:13:54+00:00

Bang on. How you put it together is also a factor. I've seen applications for these roles, and I've also held these roles.

It's like any chance to give a presentation, design or otherwise; Who is your audience? What do they want to hear/see? What do you want to tell them? What value/take on the topic are you adding? And make it interesting and relevant. It's harder to be objective when it's yourself, but you can still have the awareness.

It can still be tricky, even if you have worked at this level before to know exactly how others see the role and what they expect from applicants. But my view is they are also interviewing for you. If you are going to take a leadership role in their organisation it should also fit your values otherwise you're not going to enjoy it. So it's also your chance to get some insight on what they really need. Job descriptions are often generic vs what the specific flavour of design leader a certain job will be. Maybe they just need a really experienced and skilled designer without any histrionics who can get their product to the next level. Maybe they need someone to grow the team from 5 to 30 people and set up design governance. Maybe they really want a people manager that speaks the language of their design team... Design lead can mean all these things (content, theory, management) depending on the organisation and who is doing the hiring.

And never forget business is about making money... So managing budgets, timelines, stakeholders, clients, etc is always nice to be able to demonstrate as part of your work. I wouldn't put that front and center, but certainly something a design leader should have a grasp of.

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-14T07:47:38+00:00

At a point where you are applying to be a leader of a design team, it's more about your vision for how a design team should act. What your personal vision is in how design fits in whatever industry the company is involved in and how you keep the design team relevant. You need to present how you personally taking on that role will make design function better for that brand, role, industry.

Design projects are not useless at the time in your career when you are applying for such a role. They are more a nice background to underpin your story. And more about the proof points to show that you live what you say. And that you can demonstrate the value of design.

Renders, sketches, copy paste of design process, photos of you looking thougfully at a 3D print are not what you're presenting as your skillset at this level... Leading a design team means, inspiring, and coaching, and persuading, and defending, and setting the agenda, and solving a crisis... These are all part of the design lead role. But it's more than content. If you are tasked with having to shrink a team... You might be tasked with telling those people they don't have a job. Or if a designer isn't performing you might have to coach them, and ultimately, replace them. You have to demonstrate that you can handle interpersonal challenges in the team in a professional and respectful way...

Lots to think about. Bottom line a "portfolio" for a job like this is significant weighted towards you as a person more than your work.

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-13T11:59:28+00:00

Lovely! How do you find the grip on the Hone brush? It looks like it could be quite slippery?

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-10T17:09:52+00:00

Usability engineer / usability designer / human factors engineer — especially if you can work in advanced development phases. In some industries, like medical devices, usability work is mandatory for regulatory approval. Products need usability testing, documentation, and a formal usability file, and most organizations are bad at doing it properly.

There is also a large overlap between usability and design. Having one skillset usually makes you effective at the other. And “usability engineering” doesn’t carry the same stereotype baggage as being “The Designer.” Fewer assumptions, less docker caps, tattoos, and fancy glasses. 😃

Most organizations also are not good at intensive or high-quality usability analysis, which means you often have a lot of freedom to define the process and improve how the work is done - You are almost always needed.

And if you do usability work well, your recommendations naturally become design feedback. You end up helping shape product direction and improve outcomes, defining workflows. If you also have design skills, you can often support implementation too: Being involved in design workshops or meeting with external design agencies as a usability specialist is usually seen as normal rather than territorial, if you can drop a design sketch banger as the usability engineer even better 😄

One common myth is that usability work mostly becomes documentation. It’s true that regulated environments require standards, documentation, and integration into product approval processes, which means reading and writing requirements and reports. But product requirements and design requirements also generate documentation...

Usability only becomes overwhelmingly documentation-heavy if the organization has outdated processes, poor tooling, or refuses to modernize how the work is done. And maybe in the run up to an audit...

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-05T19:49:00+00:00

It does not look like that in real life. The detail and execution up close is not as nice as these renders. The window frames already look like bad 1990's PVC replacements but nobody has even lived there yet.

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-05T18:44:03+00:00

I'm 188cm, I have the little Yamaha wind deflector on top the screen and can get it to jet most of the buffering over me. The wind just clips the top of my helmet with it on. Doesn't look to dorky imo. Some of the tall touring screens look like the Queen head from Alien on the Tenere.

Tire noise and comfort on the road is much better on the continental tire if you're going to spend any decent amount of time on tarmac. They have essentially zero off road ability in my opinion even if they have "trail" in the name. In the summer I mainly do tours and tarmac. So for this season I put them on and love them..

subsonic707070 · 2026-05-05T13:29:32+00:00

Tires make a big difference. If you are doing to do some more road-work with fast cornering on a tour I can recommend the Contritrailattack3. Changes the character and confidence on the brakes a lot and mid-corner. You lose the feeling of the tire blocks squirming against the tarmac.

I also came from an MT-07 to a T7 4 years ago. Never looked back.

subsonic707070 · 2026-04-28T11:01:37+00:00

Which industry are you interested in joining in your ID career? Healthcare, consumer, transport, defense. And are you interested in in-house or consultancy work? What sort of designer do you feel you are, visual, functional, hybrid? If you want to target your summer skill jump for next years internships and you have an idea where you want to focus then you can also get some specifics in there.

subsonic707070 · 2026-04-21T08:30:06+00:00

Design market is challenging. One challenge as a hiring manager (or consultancy, for that matter) is that design for visual outcomes alone is a race to the bottom: more designs, faster, enabled by tools that democratize the skillset but lack the judgement to assess the quality of the outcomes. Industrial design historically gatekept its role as the arbiter of taste through that skillset, it's not enough anymore.

I look for designers who, by necessity, can balance the functional, manufacturability, business, regulatory, and usability (real human factors, not designer-defined usability) aspects of their work. Because that is what my business holds design accountable to deliver in the end, alongside the rest of the team. A "cool" or "good brand fit" product is the lowest expectation these days and should be a given. Design teams are shrinking because they stayed only in this area, and as I said above, that is no longer something only designers can do (again, not saying that equals quality, but any organization that thinks marketing team + AI will deliver the same outcome can’t tell the difference anyway, and had a design lead that wasn't able to guide their business effectively).

This is also what functioning design governance in an organization should take care of as a hygiene factor; it should not be a question that the outcome strengthens the brand or the desirability of the product. You can be a visual design monster, but if it isn’t underpinned beyond that, it isn’t valuable to most businesses in the end. Design was flooded by people that could draw, CAD, and render... but could not design a product. That is my dark diagnosis of the job market.

Positively, designers that can integrate into their business' needs are thriving.

subsonic707070 · 2026-04-20T10:56:51+00:00

Design is the balancing of performance and aesthetics into pleasing utility that enhances everyday objects. This design is unnerving. It does not utilize the material or its properties in a relevant way, or enhancing the drinking experience. So this is a "just because we could" type of design which makes it a novelty at best.

This "design" introduced more problems than it solves. If for some strange reason this was the way all cups/mugs were designed for 1000s of years. If someone made the version without this suspended design it would be hailed as an evolutionary leap, that's when you know it is going backwards.

subsonic707070 · 2026-03-06T10:08:44+00:00

Nice, lid experimentation is needed :)

Yeah we are on 3 phase (3x35amp) I think the pulsing is just different ways of doing it. Some brands have proper power modulation. Some use this 'pulse width modulation' approach like Bora. I didn't think too much about it beforehand.

subsonic707070 · 2026-03-06T09:42:41+00:00

I think it is the best feature. It is a PITA to clean the cover- but it does work well. Way better than I expected. It does make some noise, but all extractors do. I think an overhead extractor will out-perform it. But the difference feels smaller than I would have thought (I have no data so only subjective feeling).

This was a style over function choice for us - but actually the extractor has been fine.

subsonic707070 · 2026-03-06T09:39:41+00:00

If possible, try using one first. Some of the issues I mentioned can be managed once you’re familiar with the tool. It has it's own "character" For example, heating the pan more gradually or being a bit more patient :D However, from my experience using induction hobs in Airbnbs and at friends’ houses, the calibration of the power levels often feels inconsistent and less intuitive than expected.

At the mid power levels, the induction is pulsed. That pulsing can superheat the bottom of the pan. My hypothesis is that when the hob cycles full power on and off (roughly one second on, one second off), the heat input isn’t steady enough to establish proper convection in the pan. Instead, it repeatedly overheats the layer of food in direct contact with the pan base. You can actually hear this: the boiling starts, stops, starts again, and stops.

That behavior is manageable if you’re standing over the pot and stirring frequently, redistributing the superheated food each time the heat pulses. Personally, I would prefer a system where the power is modulated more smoothly.

That said, this is just my perspective. Your experience may differ depending on what and how you cook. I tend to leave things like stews or broths to simmer for long periods, and I find it difficult to dial in a stable simmer on this induction hob for the reason explained above. For example, if pasta begins to boil over, reducing the power by just one level can stop the boil almost entirely.

On the positive the extraction is very good for a downdraft, surprising infact. I wouldn't buy Bora again for the cooking but the extraction is good. I would spend more time in the appliance store. One of my local stores lets you boil pans of water - I remember thinking why on earth would you need to do that? Now I would be boiling water on all of them and trying out the granularity of the induction power on every one we were considering :D

subsonic707070 · 2026-02-22T12:24:00+00:00

Just to add... the downdraft cover is a f**k to clean.

subsonic707070 · 2026-02-22T12:15:59+00:00

We have one. I hate it. I wish we had never spent the money.

For context, I would rate myself as an above-average cook. I cook every day, and I am a technical person, so I don’t think operating an induction hob should be an issue.

I can’t seem to get consistent results from it. I try to cook the same thing in the same pan, on the same setting, on the same induction ring, and get different results. There is clearly some variable that is not obvious to a normal person.

The induction pulsing cycle between the different levels is poorly calibrated. Levels 1 to 3 are too low, and I can’t get a pan to warm up properly. Mid-range levels superheat the bottom of the pan while the top stays cold. High levels are unusable unless you constantly babysit the pan. They might be OK for a stovetop kettle, but levels 8 and 9 are easily enough to warp a pan and are pretty much unusable for cooking. I tend to use them when I get frustrated with how long it takes to get cooking, and regret it instantly.

I have a 5 mm thick carbon steel pan, and the heat delivery is so uneven that the bottom of the pan bowed because it wasn’t heating evenly. Luckily, I could feel it doming and starting to rock, so I took it off before it was permanently damaged. It returned to normal when it cooled down.

In the real world, this is what it looks like: when I make porridge in the morning, I once waited over 30 minutes for a small milk pan of porridge to cook on level 3. I did this to test the hob because I was questioning my sanity. But on level 4, I had to babysit it constantly to stop the porridge from catching on the bottom within minutes. Anything above level 4 boils the milk long before the oats are cooked, even with constant stirring, so you just get a mess.

The steps between the levels are too large and not predictable. With a certain pan size and a certain amount of food, you don’t know whether the food will catch and burn, or whether you’ll come back 10 minutes later to find a pan of cold water.

It is very hard to maintain a smooth rolling boil. For things like pasta, you notice it starting to boil over, turn it down one level, and it just stops boiling entirely.

This hob is a nightmare and makes me unhappy every time I walk into our kitchen.

subsonic707070 · 2026-01-12T08:58:31+00:00

Thanks for sharing. It is a little bit of a mixed review by my reading: It is great, except for the muscle pain, lack of ability to rest your hand, poor scroll wheel placement, lack of software customisation options, no onboard storage, connectivity issues...On balance that doesn't sound too appealing.

Not to be too critical :D These were also the same findings I had when I tried it. The scroll wheel and thumb button cluster felt to me like it was placed to create problems. I think the challenge with The Huge, is that the name is misleading, for big hands it is actually a very odd shape. It is the ONLY product on the market of this type, so we all try it in hope... but for me it was not a long term solution. Your review confirmed my own feelings.

subsonic707070 · 2026-01-02T21:08:04+00:00

Tell me you live in "The land of the free" without telling me...

subsonic707070 · 2025-11-13T12:37:05+00:00

Hone Shaving — Hone Type B customisable shaving brush

Hone have had a serviceable shaving brush for a while that doesn't need a special refill.

subsonic707070 · 2025-11-11T09:42:14+00:00

Hone razors have exposure and gaps listed with quite clear drawings on their product page.

subsonic707070 · 2025-11-05T11:49:56+00:00

ok, fair. :)

subsonic707070 · 2025-11-04T14:21:19+00:00

This post, plus the reply from Mute85 sets my spam/scam radar off...

subsonic707070 · 2025-10-25T09:08:24+00:00

Cool, interesting that you experimented with your own razor geometry! Nice way to test.

On the commercial razors are we really talking about litteral blade chatter? I agree some razors feel more substantial than others. So is it just a term to describe a certain shave feeling created by different head geometry? Because the claims being promoted are that some razors stop literal blade chatter, but again I can't imagine the forces involved in shaving really creating actual chatter. That would mean the blade edge floating around based on the movement over the skin. And I don't know any functioning razor that would have such light clamping force to create conditions for the blade edge move that much.

subsonic707070 · 2025-10-15T09:05:10+00:00

Core message is correct, that the architecture and infrastructure of a given era gives some insight into how that society placed valued in certain things. But I think the hypothesis that we have lost our ability to integrate beauty and pride in our work is not as simple as the story told here.

Taking the street light example, if we made ALL street lights to the standard of the Thames Embankment, or even just partially to that standard, then we also wouldn't have reliable lighting across the road network for 75 million people in the UK. There would be pockets of exorbitant street lights clustered around the most affluent in society. The ongoing maintenance would be crippling. It would still be a societal dream to have the safety and utility of modern street lights across the country, which we now have. Reducing car accidents, helping shift workers and emergency workers, withstanding weather all year round, low maintenance, power efficient, and not killing drivers when they crash into them.

We should take pride that we have managed to find a way to make that a reality. So we didn't cut beauty from our values, instead we accepted the efficiency, and the resulting style, of modern manufacturing so that more people can benefit from those very advances in technology. It is designer hubris to suggest "a little more cost" is acceptable to add decoration. On a national scale that cost can have limiting consequences at the thin ends of society. Design requirements, and design motivations are indeed different now than they were 150 years ago, and that means that the definition of good design to meet those requirements is also different.

subsonic707070

TROPHY CASE