Alyssa Vongries

My Story

I’ve always loved making things. When deciding what to major in, I thought “what’s more at the heart of a physical thing than the material it’s made of?” So, I got a degree in Materials Science and Engineering.

I liked the research, the problem solving of the lab, and the possibilities that materials presented, but not so much the actual learning of it. Too late in the game, I realized that I was actually more interested in the things the materials were used to make than the materials themselves.

When I joined Philadelphia Gear, I got more than I bargained for and, in retrospect, I got exactly what I needed. I took the opportunity to learn all I could about quality, lean, 3D drafting and the logic needed to make product selections.

I found things I loved:

1. In quality, I loved analyzing people and why they do what they do; figuring out their thought process, putting myself in their shoes and empathizing with their behavior.
2. I loved making mechanical blueprints and 3D models. I liked drafting something out of nothing - taking just parameters and requirements and making a precise mockup of something physical.
3. I liked sorting through customer requests, product requirements and constraints, figuring out what the customer needed, and what solution would be best.
4. In lean, I loved solving an everyday issue, for example by reorganizing and reframing the physical space a worker used to complete their work. I liked making it more usable.

An idea started to take shape. What if the things I was learning in quality could be applied to products and the processes of using them? What if the same observation, analysis and logic skills that I had built over the years could be applied to users and their products.

What if I could help solve the many work-arounds that we all devise, sometimes without even realizing, for our digital and physical products?

Turns out, there’s already entire fields of study to those exact concepts.

At the same time, I started taking an interest in human health and psychology. I started reading about the brain, body language and nonverbal communication, and the influence of nutrition and environment on our wellbeing. I keep thinking about how important it could be to implement some of these research findings about how humans are wired. How much more intuitive and healthier could our technology get?

So, I decided to make a leap, and transfer my thinking from gearboxes and shop processes to the user experience of a more diverse set of users and products.

There’s a wealth of knowledge and experience around building usable things and processes. There’s also still so much relatively untapped information about humans and our inner workings. I’m here to soak up whatever I can.

Oh, and I’d like to make those usable things beautiful too. Because if you’re going to put that much effort into something, why on earth would you make it ugly?

Unless of course, the user is looking for an unattractive or disorienting experience, and then I’m ready to start researching that, too.