Niya Kabir
Canada
CAREER Enrolled in September 2012; Completed master’s degree in March 2015
Before entering KMD fall of 2012, I graduated from the University of Toronto (class of 2011) as a Human Computer Interaction Specialist. The time between entering KMD for my Masters and graduating from my undergraduate studies, I worked part time assisting my old professors and also explored design practices in business. It was through my interactions with international students and even entrepreneurs that led me to seek out an international perspective to design research and synthesis practices. I was and still am motivated to be a designer who can work globally. I wanted to gain the skills necessary to evaluate and assess problems and opportunities, across borders and within varying cultural and social context. I would ask myself:
“How can I break away from a western dominated mindset to a way of thinking and ultimately understanding that would be borderless and flexible?”
“Or how might I gain not only the necessary skills, but also tools that I could utilize to enable design to impact society?”
It was questions like these that led me to seek out my Masters in Japan.
My decision to enter KMD, opened up main doors. For instance, joining as the first batch of GID, where I explored other design methods and challenged myself to conducting research in collaboration with a diversely skilled group of individuals.
Since graduating, I have been part of building Slush Tokyo (Slush Asia), through bringing together change makers, key industry players and different community builders together to create a thriving startup ecosystem. During my 4 years with Slush I also worked as a freelancer with startups and teams to introduce where design meets business in practice. Also, I had the great opportunity to work at a corporate venture capital for 1 year, before I moved on to focus back into design practices in business within a design agency.
Most recently, I have been working on building a company – N. A. K. Studios – focused on becoming a design partner for different stakeholders within the startup ecosystem. The goal is to collaborate and build cases on how design can impact business, beyond just visually. With the evolving design practices and the growing number of design methods and tools available, there isn’t a one fits all way to solve problems or uncover opportunities. As such, N. A. K. is aiming to be an environment, where together, founders/startups/corporates can formulating the best design practices for their given context.
(This article was written in March 2019.)