Industry Projects: our effort to help designers gain tangible experience while learning

Catching a break as a product designer today sure can be hard. The job market is at its most competitive, the hiring process can be quite tricky to navigate, and early-career product designers often face an exceedingly common challenge: they need experience to be considered for a job, but how can they gain experience if they are relatively new to the field?

At ownpath, we understand this conundrum - that’s why we’ve designed an opportunity that specifically caters to highly practical learning. As part of our flagship program, the Product Design Fellowship, we have introduced “Industry Projects” as a key feature to help designers apply their skills and gain experience in real-world industry contexts.

These projects will serve as an excellent opportunity to work in a real-world product development environment, engage with practitioners skilled in their craft, and are meant to strengthen participants’ portfolios.

In this blog, we’re delving into the why, how, and who behind our pilot set of Industry Projects.

Why we created them?

In today’s highly competitive job market, companies are specifically looking for designers who can bring more than theoretical knowledge to the table - they want practitioners who can apply their skills in a practical setting.

More importantly, they want to see proof of past work highlighting these outcomes. Companies are keen on candidates whose portfolios demonstrate such work because they want to assess:

• How designers approach problem-solving, and their ability to understand and design for the needs of users.
• How designers are able to translate theoretical knowledge into actual solutions for real industry problems and contexts.
• Articulation of their design decisions and methodology.
• Designers’ ability to take a project from concept to completion, which is a critical skill for the product design process.

What do they specifically solve?

Practice briefs from the internet can only get designers so far - especially if you’re self-taught. With craft-oriented fields such as design, you need a nurturing and structured learning environment - one where you can receive guidance, and feedback, and iterate repeatedly.

Hiring companies want to see projects that have received feedback, undergone multiple iterations, and demonstrate a satisfactory attempt at solving real problems.

That’s why our Industry Projects are an excellent avenue for designers to demonstrate to potential employers that they have what it takes to design and build products that are relevant to the industry today.

Who we’ve partnered with?

We are proud to partner with some of the industry’s best design teams such as Jiva, Vedantu, and Postman to provide these projects. Our partners’ domains range from AgTech and EdTech to API collaboration and development, and designers get the unique opportunity to work on actual products in these domains and develop their skills in a real-world setting.

Through these highly engaging and interactive projects, designers get to experience what it’s like to work in a real-world product development environment, engage with practitioners skilled in their craft, and gain valuable guidance and hands-on experience.

How does it work?

Designers at the Product Design Fellowship get to work on an Industry Project after being primed to the curriculum’s core modules.

1. Industry Projects kick off with a briefing call - our partner companies’ design teams will present Fellows with a brief/problem statement to crafting solutions.
2. Fellows will partner with a peer member from the program to work together on their project over the next 3 weeks.
3. Fellows will present their projects & proposed design solutions to our partners’ design teams on Demo Day.
4. A certificate will be granted to the participants, acknowledging their attempt at a satisfactory solution to the design brief.
5. Fellows get to showcase their projects as shining stars on their portfolios!

As we prepare to launch our pilot Industry Projects, we aim to extend this carefully designed opportunity to as many designers as possible. This will help them to develop their skills, gain industry experience, and find more rewarding jobs in design.

We are currently accepting applications for the next cohort of the Product Design Fellowship!

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