Design x Michael Huskey
Ex D-Ford Design Prototyper & Current Business Operations Analyst at Ford Motoring Company
Illustration by Bonnie Kate Wolf
Interview conducted by Andy Kwan on October 29, 2020.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am from Indiana, and I studied engineering at Purdue University. I did a kind of “create your curriculum” program called Visual Design Engineering, and I paired that up with Engineering Management. So I’m not a typical designer, since I didn’t do a full industrial design program. I did, however, take some introductory design classes for the visual design part of my degree. I took one sketching course, and it was essentially to weed out industrial designers. I got a C in the class, and the professor could tell that I improved, but the improvement was not enough, rightfully so. He said, “Michael, this is the best you could do?” and I responded, “I’m shocked at getting this far.” I was so grateful that I got that C. So I’m not a designer in that regard, but I do think I exhibit the other aspects that are becoming more common for design.
Before working in the field, whenever I thought about the word “design,” I thought about graphic designers and artists. I thought it was about making things look good. However, once I moved in my professional career and started working within Ford, I started to see design under different names. You’ve got “business designers,” “interaction designers,” “prototypers”—design is everywhere. Where do I see myself fitting in? Design means taking a step back and constantly asking why, and then moving forward about how we can solve the problem.
How did you find yourself at your job?
The original reason I came to Ford was their partnership with Google to be the main producer for Google’s autonomous vehicles, which was their next big thing. I talked to some recruiters at Purdue and got in! I remember the interview pretty well to this day. We were discussing cell phones and digital tech, and I asked them, “What do you guys think the future of cars is?” They answered, “Fuel economy, horsepower…” I told them, “I think it’s gonna be the phone. I think it’s gonna be digital connectivity and how this device will unlock new possibilities in cars.” They were taken back and thought it was a great answer, and I like to think that’s how I got the job.
I’ve been at the company for three years, and I have three different titles. I’m always trying to do the best I can where I am at, but also be on the lookout for new opportunities to expand my skill set. I often think about how I can get to where I want to be. I think this applies to jobs and side hustles. No one is going to just tap you on the shoulder and hire you. You have to tell them you want to be hired. You don’t want to hide what you’ve done. Instead, you should be showcasing it.
“No one is going to just tap you on the shoulder and hire you. You have to tell them you want to be hired.”
I also write a little bit on the side and reach out to people to say, “Hey Jed, Ross, I want to be hired, and this is what I like doing. Let me know.” I have gotten better reactions to that in three months than I did just writing for a year.
What was your journey like getting into Ford’s design program? What was it like working at Ford itself?
It’s fun looking back at how my trajectory at Ford comes full circle. My first job at Ford was very technical and very hands-on in production. There’s a saying that goes, “As an engineer, you studied a lot to focus on small granular details.” My first engineering role was something like that. I wanted to flex more of my visual design skills, so after about a year in that group, I began to look for other opportunities in the company. I reached out to D-Ford, Ford’s human-centered design group. I networked there, reached out to people within Ford and told them my story and interests, and looked for guidance. When I got into D-Ford and got to see how it was—these big concepts and projects that came very often—it was exciting. That’s how I ended up in design. I like to ask the question why.
Something else important to me is seeing this end up in customers’ hands and make an impact in their lives. I’ve recently joined a group that takes a lot of insights and concepts from designers and takes it through that last mile. We take 3D-printed parts and Arduino prototypes to custom-made circuit boards and production-level housing, so we’ll see what happens next.
I still talk to all the people in my previous group, and I think I might end up bouncing back and forth between these two disciplines the rest of my career—working on concepts that are out there, but then coming back to projects that get implemented.
What did you love most about being a prototyper for Ford, and what did you find most challenging in that role?
I think what was most challenging was seeing things not get implemented, and sometimes not understanding why. Sometimes when you end up in a huge company, it’s something you have to process. In school, you do a project and get a grade on it, plain and simple. You get the A and move on. In Corporate America, however, you can put a lot of effort into something that doesn’t get implemented because of some granular detail that could potentially affect a different component. That was what I was always most frustrated by.
The thing I would get most excited about was when I worked on making something physical and then seeing it in customer research. I think that was the most fun, knowing that the better I make this product, the better chance we have of getting it into production and in the customers’ hands. I think there’s a little bit of ego that comes into that. You want to work on something that someone says, “Oh, this was great!” and the ego in me is like “Yeah!” I want to be able to say, “You see that cool thing in that commercial? That was me. That started as a piece of cardboard, and now it’s there.” The most frustrating thing is when you have a really good idea that no one else sees, or you have a really good idea that everyone else likes but for whatever reason doesn’t make it into production. They teach in school, “Don’t become too in love with your idea,” which is something I am still working on getting better at.
You currently have a patent-pending project that you hope to see make into production. How does it feel, knowing that something you created might or might not end up in paying customers’ hands?
Even if the product does not get implemented, I completely understand. The bigger thing that I am very excited about is the design process that went into it. At Ford, there are a lot of different ways we measure effectiveness in a car, some of which are very funny. One of the ways to measure for storage is if you can fit an umbrella. They ask, “Can you fit an umbrella in certain compartments?” And you constantly ask yourself, “How is that a measurement?” Everyone seems to know about it, but it’s not written down anywhere. That’s what led me to question the reason why we designed using this very antiquated metric. This exemplifies asking why, taking a step back, and questioning why we do things in certain ways during our design process.
As tech evolves, so do companies. What can you do now with your background in engineering and design to help Ford take those next steps and work in tandem with the leads at the company?
I actually just talked to the former Chief Information Officer at Ford, and one of the biggest pieces of advice she gave was that you have to network well within big companies, especially older ones where you need a lot of people to get things done. I grew up an only child who used to and still think that I can do anything on my own. Now I’m trying to build that little brand within the company. It’s building up that self-equity within the company, as a person that gets things done. There are a lot of old ways of working, which is just the nature of the business when you’re working in a 100-year-old company, but underneath those old ways of working is a lot of great domain knowledge. It’s a balancing act of introducing new ways of working, while not losing the audience in the room. It’s essentially creating and investing in a “coalition” around me while I am young.
“It’s a balancing act of introducing new ways of working, while not losing the audience in the room.”
What or who has inspired you and your work?
Gary Vaynerchuk gets me hyped up, but what turned that energy into action was when I talked to a former executive at Amazon at the beginning of this year. He told me, “No matter what you do, learn how to make it. Ideas are great, but makers are what moves things forward.”
I connected with other people, and I kept hearing that same kind of thing. Have the resume ready, do great work, be able to point to the great work, and be ready to move. Opportunities never just appear on your lap. You’re seeing a lot more people get on LinkedIn and tell their stories. I am also trying to be better at being honest—being able to admit that some parts of my career could have been better—and learning from that to continue improving myself.
You mentioned The Lean Startup on your LinkedIn profile. How has that book changed the way you approach design?
I think it’s changed the way I get my work out there. For example, my website where I write articles took a week to build and design. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. But after publishing it, I kept on iterating and pushing the website out. The first time I tried to build my site, it took me a couple of months and I never published it. I think the whole “lean startup” methodology is just to get it out there.
People only remember the last thing you did because that’s the last thing you did. When I started writing, a couple of people made fun of me for it. If I just stopped there, they would have said, “Oh, remember when he tried that?” But now, they say, “Huskey? Yeah, he writes!” I think that’s what the book always refers to, simply getting it out there and giving it a good swing. Of course, don’t do it too fast, and make sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s. I used to sit on articles for months, but now I try to see if I can get an article out in an hour.
When people question if iteration is the best way to improve, I sometimes refer to older iterations of Apple’s logo. Apple’s logo right now is one of the most valuable trademarks in the world. However, their first attempts had Isaac Newton sitting under a tree. It was the busiest thing in the world, and it didn’t scream elegance and excellence. It’s bizarre, but whenever you try to do anything, whether it’s at work or outside of it, you spend a lot of time on the things that aren’t going to push the needle forward and that can end up making you stop. How many people have had a dream of a start-up but stopped because they couldn’t come up with a cool name?
What challenge out there are you most excited about designing for?
It’s designing the education system. I guess you could say my first experiment would be on my future kids. A lot of behavior and expectations that we have as adults comes from school. When we look at retirement, we think of it as an age some time far into the future. You get to eighth grade when you’re 12, and then you graduate when you’re 18. Our schooling system sets people up to think you can only achieve things at a certain age. I think that sets us up for a bad mentality. It’s as if it was programmed into you to think about these “checkpoints,” but when you are working in the professional world, they don’t exist.
“Our schooling system sets people up to think you can only achieve things at a certain age.”
I think there’s just a lot of weird incentive structures within schools that end up leading to bad outcomes for students. That’s something I’m probably the most excited about to change. I pride myself as someone who probably will never go back to college. I think it’s overpriced, but if I want to tell everyone, “Hey, you shouldn’t do this,” I need to have something to back me up. That’s where some of my career accomplishments come into play. If I just went out and said our school system stinks and doesn’t work, people will respond negatively and say that I am just some angry 25-year-old. But if I can build a career with a place like a large company, and people can see proof and say, “Okay, how did you do this?”
I always experiment and work on different projects outside of design, from learning marketing techniques for the blog I run, to reading about finance management techniques for my stock portfolio from books. These are all things that people pay $50- to $70,000 for in higher education but I learned with $200 worth of books. I think that’s the challenge. There are so many leaders in the industry that had started in other industries and switched over successfully. I want to be able to have that kind of resume and have people say, “Michael delivered on this stuff at Ford, this 100-year-old company, and has experience in so many different aspects and fronts. Yeah, let him have a crack at modernizing our education system.” You have to build up your experiences to tackle those.
I don’t expect to be redesigning the education system in the next year or two—it’s the long game—but hopefully, with the writing I do, working with others on interviews and talks will make me a better communicator. Hopefully what I do professionally helps build up my credibility as someone who can think big and execute. That’s the biggest challenge I want to design for, but there are a lot of things I still have to do on my end to even get myself an opportunity to be in that position.
