From Sweden to Chicago: An Internship at Beyond Design
Providing students with real-world product development experience is extremely important to our team at Beyond Design. We devote much of our time to mentoring design students from around the world through our internship program. We recently had two students, Joakim Borg and Samantha Pukala, from the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden spend some time at our studio to work on their bachelor’s thesis.
Their concept was centered on a new design for traffic communication. They spent a lot of time studying and observing pedestrians throughout the city of Chicago by visiting the busiest intersections and observing how they interacted with the traffic communication. Their findings were then brought back to our studio to begin defining what they envisioned their end solution to be. Several members of our team participated in a brainstorming session to help Joakim and Samantha gain a better understanding of what direction they should go with the project.
“While at Beyond Design, I learned a lot about the design process and the importance of trusting it from the beginning, even when you aren’t sure of the end result.”
— Samantha Pukala, 2011
They presented their final concept to our team on the last day of their internship. They focused on ways to make traffic communication a safer and more enjoyable experience for everyone by incorporating elements you would find in nature.
“Our internship at Beyond Design far exceeded our expectations. Everyone had a very open and friendly attitude and showed interest in our project from the beginning. We were encouraged to use various methods and ways to reach our end result. We also really enjoyed using Beyond’s state-of-the-art equipment that aided in our design. ”
— Joakim Borg and Samantha Pukala, 2011
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