Statistically speaking, you’re probably the only industrial designer in your family. And if you’ve gone home for the holidays, you’re going to feel like an unrelatable alien as you pick up kitchen items and explain the difference between ABS and polypropylene while your relatives roll their eyes.

Still, you have a duty as an industrial designer, which is to educate your non-design-savvy relatives on Design, which is the most important thing in the world. So here are some discussion topics you can bring up at the dinner table to edify and entertain:

Short Topics

– “Brutalist doesn’t mean what you think it means”

– The difference between UX and UI

– From Loewy to Rams: Industrial Design Milestones of the 20th Century

– The wonders of parametric modeling

– Fusion vs. Solidworks: Menu bar layout and workflow

– FDM, SLA, SLS: Which 3D printing methods excel for which applications?

– Why ergonomics matters: Case studies of recent medical equipment design

In-Depth Kitchen Crit

Go through your host’s kitchen appliances and gizmos. Point out the design flaws of each. With expensive items, ask how much they paid for them, then announce what the actual BOM cost was.

Correct Your Grandparents: Ten Things They’ve Told People That You Do for a Living

– Industrial Assigner

– Industrial Engineer

– Industry Artist

– Interior Decorator

– Mechanical Designer

– Computer Drawer

– Nuclear CAD Fusion Expert

– ID Theft Prevention Specialist

– “They draw things, and do something with clay”

– They change the subject to a different relative with a more understandable job

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Happy Thanksgiving, folks. Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon.

Source: core77