What do you consider to be your greatest professional achievement?

Ayse Birsel: Earning a living doing what I love.

Bibi Seck: My son asked us why everything in our house wasn't designed by us. I think I have my work cut out for me.

What is the most fulfilling part of your job?

AB: Sketching in my sketchbook with the music or TV on and a cup of tea by my side.

BS: To put a pencil in my 4-year-old daughter's hand and ask her to draw me the car of her dreams.


What are the biggest challenges facing designers today?

AB: Few companies today are willing to give designers time and money to play. Play is fundamental to design and innovation.

BS: Originality.


What is the best thing you've learned in the past 10 years?

AB: Self-confidence.

BS: To think before I sketch.


What advice would you give to design students or those just starting out in the field?

AB: Nobody seems to tell students that design is just as much about business as it is about creativity.

BS: If one day they decide to change careers they should really do it before it is too late.


What do you consider to be the worst invention of the last 100 years?

AB: The atomic bomb comes to mind.

BS: Photoshop and Illustrator.


What inspired your career choices?

AB: I loved that industrial design is human in scale.

BS: I don't really know. Today, I think it was more instinctive than rational.


If you could have selected another career, what might you have been?

AB: An opera singer, but I don't have a voice.

BS: Airline pilot.


How do you foresee the future of design changing?

AB: I think our future is up to politicians, scientists, clergy, philanthropists to solve problems and to do good. We're optimists. We have empathy. We solve problems and visualize new solutions. This is the future of both design and design education.

BS: We will design more and more virtually—virtual objects for virtual people in virtual spaces. The reality is going to bore us.