Fellow:Mateo Conde

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Hello, my name is Mateo Conde. I am a student at Bucknell University, studying computer engineering. But I am much more than that. Being an

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engineering student, I am engaged in the world of ‘creating’ and making new gadgets that should hopefully have a meaningful impact on society. However, I try not to fall into the trap of standard engineering. Engineers tend to create a solution in search of a problem and then create new problems along the way. From a young age, I have been very interested in design. Because of my lack of drawing abilities, I took up graphic design, which has taught me a lot about what makes a good design. A lot of what I know today has been self-taught, not learned in school. The tedium of teaching yourself something new has taught me how to interpret misunderstanding and design language failure. In high school, I started a small web design business that allowed me to practice both my programming and design skills. Through this business, I learned to ask myself one question: “If I was my mom, how would I get mad at this design?” By putting myself in the shoes of my mother, I was able to understand where my design failed, where it was easy to interpret for me but not for my mother. This simple notion has informed a lot of what I do because design is communication, and creating clear design is to communicate clearly. It’s how we get our point across. In my future career, I hope to engineer and design solutions to problems that afflict society and to make those solutions meaningful and intuitive.