Let me say that cliché sentence - yes, space has always fascinated me from my early years. Back as a teenager, I regularly attended the International Astronomical Youth Camps. But I’ve also always loved manual and creative tasks. In the end, I graduated from product design and languages for my bachelor, and then did a master in Design Innovation and Service Design. I went from a very tangible way of creating physical products with my own hands to a more strategic, holistic way of looking at experience around products and services.

Space has never let me go though. After my studies, I was accepted for an internship at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne to join a media lab there. My role was really versatile, ranging from graphic design of patches and merchandising materials, though UX design for a training platform, to documenting the basic astronaut training. It was also the first moment when I realised that design skills are rather rare in this industry and there is a lot of potential for growth.

Back then, commercial and new space was in its infancy. Concepts like a good UX or a user-centred design were a rather novel thing in the industry, not to even mention a job position like that. And so I went to work for technological consultancies as a Service Designer. Then, I worked on a series of digital and design transformation projects in the financial industry, I was also teaching Design Thinking and design facilitation.

That lasted until 2019, when I did the Space Studied Program at the International Space University. It became clear to me that this is now the right time to go back to the space industry and bring that experience of digital transformation into the changing space industry. And so it happened, and continues until today - either as part of my activity at ODIS, a wide spectrum design studio focusing on the space industry, or as a Product Director at a digital development studio working with the space industry. Most recently, I also co-founded the Designers in Space Community to unite those who believe that design can be a strategic tool to help the space industry transform and grow more sustainably.

Designers need to be all terrain professionals in any industry. In my work, every time I enter a project, I need to learn an awful amount of information about topics that are usually new to me. I need to speak to the stakeholders, experts and end user to understand their needs, pains and expectations for a product or service in definition, facilitate the process of making sense out of all this information and translate it into something tangible like a concept or a mock-up of a proposed solution. It requires not only technical knowledge of how to design an intuitive and desirable solution, but most importantly, a lot of soft skills to facilitate workshops and conversations, to build a safe space and a relationship of trust that welcomes different perspectives at the table.

It obviously applies to being a designer in any industry. In space, however, designers are a special kind of trailblazer. Many companies and agencies are just starting to work with design thinking, collaborative innovation and agile methodologies, so very often we are also design ambassadors and educators.

Space is an engineering-dominated environment, where it is easy to get lost in the technical jargon. I can't emphasize enough how important it is for the design team to have that strategic ability to zoom out from the everyday level of detail in order to keep that product vision and values in place throughout the whole process.

One of my big ambitions is already happening, which is opening up a platform for designers and space professionals to come together and talk. We do that regularly at the Designers in Space Community (DiSC).

My ultimate goal and vision would be contributing to a situation when every space company and agency has a decent design department whose job goes beyond “beautifying” things, but has a strategic place at the table. It has happened in so many other industries already, I don't see a reason why it won't happen in space!