u/NeonEchoe28

Hello Reddit,

I found your community looking for career advices for becoming a product designer. It‘s a dream of myself to work in the outdoor industry as a product designer for a long time, and I want to make the career shift in the next years. Here I am looking for help and an advice. I don‘t have a degree in product design/ industrial design and never really worked in that area, so I am happy about every insight and advice I can get.

About me: I currently work part time as a teacher for art and sports (studied both) and outdoor guide on my holidays (packrafting, Kayak, hiking). Being outdoor is a big passion for me and I really love to get in touch with new products and share my knowledge with other people about that. I would call myself a pretty advanced outdoor enthusiast with a wide range of experience in this field. Every year I sleep around 30-50 nights in a tent in various countries all around Europe and make presentations in local equipment shops about my work as a guide, presenting stories from my trips. I have some experience in photography as well, so this goes hand in hand.

I like to design, craft and develop products since many years. In my years studying art, design was one of my favourite subjects and I loved to create new ideas. While studying I started building fishing rods (fishing was a big thing for me then), created a little brand, sold some rods, but did quit later when I lost my interest in fishing. I learned something about different materials and design. 3 years ago I bought a sewing machine and started making my own outdoor equipment and fell deep in a rabbit hole of making backpacks all winter long, just to test them the next summer season. Everything I made was sketched and designed by myself, I don‘t use online patterns on my projects. But since today nearly all my work is done analog in my sketchbook and with pen and paper. I will dig deep in 3D Design and CAD programs this winter to develop some skills, but honestly I am not sure which skills are worth to invest. I thought about working with Fusion 360 and Seamly2D. I got pretty good feedback on my products and design from people who tested them, but don‘t really know what to do with all that in the next step. I would really appreciate to get some advice, tips, experience and insights for becoming a product designer and stepping into the outdoor industry.

I know that this field is hard work and full of competition, but it‘s worth a try for me. I just don‘t know how.

Dear reddit,

I currently work as a K12 teacher and want to change my job to instructional design in the next year. Currently I am spending lots of time learning the technical aspects of the job and try to get used to the best softwares that are needed in the business. As far as I know, Articulate Storyline is a must have tool for being an ID. From my research, the program is just made for Windows. Here is my struggle: I work with Mac since more than 10 years and really struggle to use Windows. I simply hate it compared to Mac OS. I know that it is kind of possible to run Storyline on a Mac with Windows over Parallels, but as said before, using Windows would be a lot of pain for me.

Because I did never work before in that area, and have all my knowledge from YT and research, I would be happy to get some real life experiences on that from the community. Is it necessary to use Windows in the business? Are there today other good options to Articulate Storyline, that run easily on a Mac?