My name is Steven Calhoun.
I am a multidisciplinary designer based out of Somerville, MA.I have an educational background in product design, design research, and business strategy. In short, I am obsessed with the intersection of design and business innovation. I love investigating how businesses lead their industries with strategic design positioning. All products and services have the same end goal: to give the user value that is worth the time/monetary cost. Design thinking can help find ways to make both the provided value more catered, and the cost more optimized. I believe design is a tool that helps us make sense of complex systems, and that is what perpetuates my love for problem-solving through design.
I began my journey as a designer in the garage of my childhood home, building toys, skate ramps, and forts as my father built Spanish missionary-style wood furniture out of cherry and walnut woods. By constantly building and prototyping, even as a child, I recognized the power of articulating thoughts through different mediums.
This process of building, refining, and repeating was ingrained in my head. I always knew I wanted to become a creator, but what I didn’t know was what I would end up doing for a profession. Design found me as I was looking for jobs that focus on expression, understanding, and creation.
Outside of professional life, I love creating watercolor and multi-medium artwork. I push pigments around until my brain feels happy about it. Painting makes me feel calm, nothing more to it!
Art portfolio :)
Email here: Stevenmcalhoun@gmail.com
Or click here: Contact form
Art portfolio :)
Contact me
Bored? Need a drink? Want to show me pictures of your dogs? Want to ask me what the image is? ...Or maybe you want to talk about working together. Whatever it is, hit me up, and let’s chat!Email here: Stevenmcalhoun@gmail.com
Or click here: Contact form
Good design is fun (ctional)
- Design is a systematic process of solving problems within the limitations set onto us.
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Design is a method of communication that allows stakeholders to understand and translate our intents into action.
- Design solutions balance the needs of your users while ensuring your organization’s goals are achieved (these things ideally align!)
Good work makes me happy
The thing that excites me most about design is its ability to teach me new things. Curiosity and stubbornness drive my quest for understanding. Design allows me to approach specific problems with definitive parameters. I’ve always thought that the most successful outcomes are generated from times of stress, limitation, and ambiguity.
Process makes perfect (ish)
Design without process is like baking without measuring. You may know what you need, you may know all the required materials, but without the correct sequence of steps, you’re leaving a lot of the work up to assumptions and luck.My design process
- Investigate
The most important aspect of design is understanding. This means understanding your goals, users, and the limitations that always come to rain on your design parade. - Iterate
Once the fuzzy ideas begin to form a design solution, the best thing to do is to create and fail. Only through knowing what is working and what is not can you truly tell if your solutions are perfect. (Inherently, no design is perfect though) - Assess (inate?)
Design methodology, much like the scientific methodology, relies on proving your hypotheses. Through user testing, designs are able to be “torn apart”. In other words, by assessing your designs, you are also allowing for the holes to show, for the oversights to be highlighted, and for the effectiveness of the design to be evaluated.