Yesterday I received an email from a large, well-known corporation asking if I’d be interested in discussing a job opening they needed to fill. Crafting a response to what would be for many Industrial Designers an excellent opportunity took some thought; how does one explain what I’m working toward? This is a piece of what I wrote:

The offer to discuss the opening you have available is very much appreciated, however the kind of position that might tempt me would need to be in tune with the cutting edge things I’ve been pursuing related to our profession’s future; which, from my conversations with other designers, aren’t even on most corporate radars at the moment.

I can only imagine the puzzled look on the recipient’s face. How can someone casually dismiss such an opportunity? What “cutting edge things”? What does “related to our profession’s future” mean?

It’s too bad I didn’t have Wired’s article (Link) to perhaps explain some – not all – of what I see coming. Right now the people in Second Life aren’t really doing the kinds of things I think we’ll be seeing in the coming months and years; truly leveraging the power of an immersive 3D space. The closest I see them currently getting are projects like Kimberly Rufer-Bach’s work for UC Davis Medical Center mentioned in the Wired story (btw, I’ll ask Kim to share more pictures of her work which I can post here in some future entry). However, there’s no reason that either Second Life, or perhaps the soon-to-be-released Croquet v1.0 application, cannot be used as PLM software. That’s what I see coming and which I believe will have a profound impact on … a whole lot of things.