How will the proposed study contribute to your career?
Pakistan is an agrarian economy with a very rich art and craft culture and a limited industrial base with few value-added exports. Two decades back very few people were aware of the importance of industrial design as a catalyst in value addition. Even as of now despite having a great future potential there is no institution offering a postgraduate degree in Industrial Design due to lack of design specialists in the country. Currently, only seven art and design institutes offer an undergraduate degree in Industrial/ Product design and fewer number of field specialists are serving in only two institutes.
I am currently teaching as a lecturer for Industrial Design at the undergraduate level. After successfully working as a multi-disciplinary designer for 8 years in the industry and 4 years in academia, it has encouraged me to apply for a postgraduate degree in Industrial Design to enhance my field knowledge and to gain an amplified global perspective towards industrial design.
Pakistan lacks a well-reformed curriculum due to the lack of proper infrastructure and design competencies. Choosing the University of New South Wales is my first option as Masters of Design is an interdisciplinary industry engaged-program for two reasons. Firstly, the advantage of foci on the integration of varied design concepts such as design thinking, technology and conceptual skills to meet the global design innovation needs at one place. And secondly, having the skills earned after the specialized qualification will help me to demonstrate innovative solutions to problem solving in regard to the academic structure of the field at my home country.
My professional degree in design is a pathway to extend my professional, research and practice based skills to progress in a more purposeful manner and to be able to link academia and industry practice in Pakistan.