Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenna Fizel.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My academic background is in architecture and, right out of school, I did work at an architecture firm doing computational geometry. I quickly realized that not only was I most interested in the system creation end of design, but that my personal virtual environment was at least as important to me as my physical one. So, I started looking for ways to address what was behind the screen I looked at all day as well as the space I occupied. While my original plan was to return to school, Small Design gave me the chance to enter a practice creating these mixed digital/physical environments. Over the past eight years I’ve become an application and web developer, strengthened my design sense, and maintained and expanded my expertise in digital fabrication. In a day, I can go from designing a relational database to rendering a photorealistic installation to wiring an Arduino to writing a new project proposal.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I was very lucky to have such a smooth transition from architecture to software design and development, but it did swing me from an absolute focus on the physical to life lived even more in front of a screen. While my work life does sometimes involve meditative physical tasks like assembling mechanical components or wiring electronics, I’ve ended up focusing my hobbies on creating physical objects. This has sometimes lead to new, useful skills. I’ve used my after-hours experience with building 3D printed objects in a donor wall project for Dana-Farber. I’ve also done less useful things, like creating a wall sculpture of 100 elaborate origami roses.
Please tell us about Small Design Firm.
Small Design Firm has been designing and developing interactive experiences since 1999. Our founder, David Small, was one of the early graduates of the MIT Media Lab and has been thinking about the way people interact with spaces both digital and physical for decades. I started at Small in 2009 and brought expertise in creating architectural spaces and computational geometry. Since we’re both a design firm and software development shop we really like to work with our clients to understand what their content and messaging goals are and let the project be driven from there. We try to stay content-first and let the technology and design always exist in service to the goals of the piece. One recent project involves nearly 1,000 LEDs, a custom 3D printed armature a suite of microcontrollers and a custom fabricated array of capacitive sensors, but what visitors experience is a glowing, paintable lamp that, other than its interactivity, could be any other lamp in the gallery. Many of our clients are local (our latest project is in the lobby of Boston City Hall) but we also do work in other parts of the country and abroad (one of my favorites is at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo).
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
We always like to try to do something we haven’t done before in each project. We’re a small company, and everyone who works here does it in part to be continually challenged to learn new techniques and explore new kinds of design. This can lead to plenty of challenges! Some are of the mundane business variety: how do accurately price something extremely novel? How do you absorb labor overruns? Communicating new technology ideas to clients can sometimes be done best with a glossy rendering but other times is better served by rigged up prototype made of a microcontroller and some tin foil. And, of course, making all our designs real requires good and clear communication with other trades like AV installers, fabricators and building architects. Having excellent partners who are game to experiment and a client with a clear understanding of their project goals are critical to our success.
Contact Info:
- Address: 234 Broadway
Suite 1
Cambridge, MA 02139 - Website: http://smalldesignfirm.com/
- Phone: (617) 661-6680
- Email: jenna@smalldesignfirm.com
Image Credit:
All photos by Small Design Firm
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