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Design Ideas and Approach

Nancy Bakhaty

Hi I am Nancy and I am a Mechatronics Engineer. I am currently looking to set up my own portfolio website and I am stuck with trying to come up with ideas to design in the first place to upload on the website. 

Why do I want to design? To demonstrate and develop my design engineering skills and how I approach a design challenge. 

What concepts do I want to focus on? Design Engineering, Product Development and Electronics Engineering.

What tools/platforms do I currently have access to? Ki-cad for board designs, Fusion 360 for 2D and 3D CAD models and currently trying to set up ROS 2. 

Any recommendations on where can I start and progress? Any useful frameworks/approaches?

Thank you in advance.

  • Oh gosh, it's difficult as it's chicken-and-egg - if someone is going to employ a designer they generally want to see work that they have actually done and delivered rather than ideas of work they might do. I do appreciate that begs the question of how you win that first job, which I guess is where you are.

    So not quite answering the question, but I would really strongly recommend you find a way of showing some actual work you have delivered for someone. Often a good start is charities, community projects, small local museums and similar etc - you may not get paid but equally they will be willing to take a chance on someone cheap (free). You want to find 2-3 quite different design projects to each other so you don't risk getting "typecast". There's usually plenty of organisations around that need help, Look at what they currently have and offer "I think that could be better if it was designed to work like this, would you like me to have a go?".

    You could try https://remap.org.uk/  I personally haven't had much luck with them, but I think it all depends how active they are in your local area, in principle it should be a brilliant way of gaining and showcasing design skills while helping people at the same time.

    And equally you may find this type of work leads to you making contacts that lead to paid work anyway.

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