[Beckyyf]

Hi, ive recently developed my passion for designing into wearable technology and i have decided this is the career i would like to end up in. I am stuck however as to what i should study in university to help me achieve this. I have thought maybe engineering but i prefer the more creative side however fashion design is not exactly what i am aiming for. I would like to develop military and police wear or incorporate gadgets into clothing and ideas or help would be extremely useful! i only have a limited time to decide as i am applying this year :|

[theandyguthrie]

Just do engineering and you can specialize later on.

[Beckyyf]

Thankyou, il have a look at some engineering courses! would you recommend considering product design courses as well?

[pheonix254]

Woah, sorry to intrude, but designing wearable technology doesn't particularly strike me as much to do with engineering to me, at all.
Maybe look at graphical design, design for industry, or even fashion, but engineering is one of the hardest courses you can sign up for at university and I feel I owe it to you to let you know what it entails.

Firstly, you're going to need to be strong at mathematics, engineering is ALL about applied mathematics, so if concepts like complex numbers, partial integrals and differential equations don't appeal in some way, then you're going to be in for a shock. It is about design, but the design an engineer does is full of technical drawings, tolerances, error management and simulations. Designing a car suspension rod isn't done in the same way that a concept car is drawn out. An engineer does the former, a graphic designer probably does the latter.

So yeah, a lot of maths, an intricate understanding of how things work, and how they can be represented to determine their properties and limits, using that maths, to ensure that they meet their specifications and are fit for purpose, whatever that may be. You'll be learning your tools of the trade (mathematics, programming and equation manipulation on a computer) the relationship that the microscopic has on the macroscopic, how to determine how things will behave under a variety of situations and what physical processes need to be understood in order to understand how to make something work, reliably, at a suitable cost, safely and what its limitations are.

Think of a power grid, large machinery, a jet engine, your computer, your mobile phone, and how it works. Engineering is the study of that, and how to create and improve technology, often invisibly to everyone. The nitty-gritty, the circuit boards no one sees, the communications protocols that connect your conversation on your mobile around the world, the reduction of carbon dioxide coming out of your car exhaust by altering how you provide fuel to the engine - these are engineering problems - all the stuff you can't generally see. We're not mechanics or technicians or electricians - they fix and maintain the things that the engineers design, following the rules the engineers lay out (in theory).

The look of the latest ipad or macbook, the design of your watch, or furniture generally is not done by an engineer, we leave that to designers, art departments, graphics and marketing - people who know what makes things ergonomic, look pretty, user friendly and other things that engineers don't really pay much attention to. We make the deep functionality work, we're responsible and get blamed every time something techical goes wrong, (like when the lights go out through a power cut) and are never thanked when it works flawlessly for years at a time. That is what engineering is about. Using mathematics and physics to manipulate things to make money for people. Its the way the world works.

Hope this gives people a better idea of what engineering entails - it's not what it first appears, as most students find out fairly early on in their course.

Best of luck,

Stu Haynes, MEng MIET MIEEE

[Beckyyf]

Thankyou very much for your detailed reply! its exactly what i wanted to know. I do study maths and physics in school and people generally expect me to go more into the technical side of design but thats not what i think i would be best at. Ive read up on industrial design courses and they seem more fitting for me. Now i just need to find a good university! :L any suggestions?