“Growing up in Hawaii, I lived a very positive lifestyle and I was trying to promote that within my family and friends,” says Chaz Inouye (BFA Product Design ‘17). “I wanted to take that into designs of my own. Encouraging more positivity within the lives of my users is the main inspiration of my work.”
Chaz’s senior exhibition included a compact, affordable standing wheelchair called Boost. “I wanted to create a wheelchair that not only is more practical for an independent lifestyle but also promotes confidence in the job field and even social engagement,” he says. He also designed Wayer, a line of chic footwear for the urban cyclist, a project he pitched to Lightspeed.
He says that his experience at Otis College helped him see things more expansively: “Having to design for an array of customers, you have to see things from multiple perspectives. It’s not a job where you can have one goal in mind and just shoot for that. You have to take opinions from all over and from different people to really build your design and find the one that best works for the user.”
Interested in learning more about the Otis College experience? Grab your viewbook here or take the virtual tour!