Example Career: Interior Designers

Career Description

Plan, design, and furnish interiors of residential, commercial, or industrial buildings. Formulate design which is practical, aesthetic, and conducive to intended purposes, such as raising productivity, selling merchandise, or improving life style. May specialize in a particular field, style, or phase of interior design.

What Job Titles Interior Designers Might Have

• Decorating Consultant
• Design Manager
• Interior Designer
• Showroom Executive Director

What Interior Designers Do

• Design plans to be safe and to be compliant with the American Disabilities Act (ADA).
• Coordinate with other professionals, such as contractors, architects, engineers, and plumbers, to ensure job success.
• Inspect construction work on site to ensure its adherence to the design plans.
• Use computer-aided drafting (CAD) and related software to produce construction documents.
• Advise client on interior design factors such as space planning, layout and use of furnishings or equipment, and color coordination.
• Confer with client to determine factors affecting planning interior environments, such as budget, architectural preferences, and purpose and function.
• Estimate material requirements and costs, and present design to client for approval.
• Review and detail shop drawings for construction plans.
• Formulate environmental plan to be practical, esthetic, and conducive to intended purposes, such as raising productivity or selling merchandise.
• Design spaces to be environmentally friendly, using sustainable, recycled materials when feasible.
• Research and explore the use of new materials, technologies, and products to incorporate into designs.
• Render design ideas in form of paste-ups or drawings.
• Select or design, and purchase furnishings, art works, and accessories.
• Subcontract fabrication, installation, and arrangement of carpeting, fixtures, accessories, draperies, paint and wall coverings, art work, furniture, and related items.
• Plan and design interior environments for boats, planes, buses, trains, and other enclosed spaces.

What Interior Designers Should Be Good At

• Originality - The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
• Fluency of Ideas - The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
• Near Vision - The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Visualization - The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
• Written Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
• Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
• Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Mathematical Reasoning - The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
• Category Flexibility - The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Flexibility of Closure - The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).

What Interior Designers Should Be Interested In

• Artistic - Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
• Enterprising - Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

What Interior Designers Need to Learn

• Design - Knowledge of design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.
• Clerical - Knowledge of administrative and clerical procedures and systems such as word processing, managing files and records, stenography and transcription, designing forms, and other office procedures and terminology.
• Engineering and Technology - Knowledge of the practical application of engineering science and technology. This includes applying principles, techniques, procedures, and equipment to the design and production of various goods and services.
• Building and Construction - Knowledge of materials, methods, and the tools involved in the construction or repair of houses, buildings, or other structures such as highways and roads.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
• Fine Arts - Knowledge of the theory and techniques required to compose, produce, and perform works of music, dance, visual arts, drama, and sculpture.
• Sales and Marketing - Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.
• Public Safety and Security - Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
• Computers and Electronics - Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
• Psychology - Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
• Mathematics - Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
• Communications and Media - Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods. This includes alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media.