graduate stories

Innovation School graduates go on to work in a variety of different roles for a diverse mix of employers and organisations, including the NHS, Social Care, third sector, Scottish/UK Government, Google, Facebook, Intel and the BBC. Others continue into further study or set up their own businesses. They are particularly sought after by health and social care providers, charities, local councils and government..

Alexsandra Kaleta-Pyrek

Design Innovation & Environmental Design

Scottish Government

Senior Service Designer

While working at Graft, I heard about a fixed-term appointment offer for a service designer within the Digital Transformation Division at the Scottish Government, and I applied for it. At the same time, I was offered a job in a user research role at the NHS Inform. It was a difficult decision as I was not fully aware of how it works in practice in the public sector.

Gemma Lord

BDes Product Design

IDEO

Design Director

After graduating from the GSA, I applied for an internship at Graft. I believe the GSA degree show helped me to gain confidence as my work was noticed, and I was encouraged to apply for it. I was successful, and the internship at Graft lasted from July 2019 to January 2020. I worked as a Design Management Research Intern and Innovation Strategy Intern with a lovely team in Edinburgh. While working at Graft, I heard about a fixed-term appointment offer for a service designer within the Digital Transformation Division at the Scottish Government, and I applied for it. At the same time, I was offered a job in a user research role at the NHS Inform. It was a difficult decision as I was not fully aware of how it works in practice in the public sector.

Monika Kantor

Creative Economy

Spotify

Product Designer

Studying at the GSA helped me boost my creativity by having some freedom for ideas I had at that time, and I still would love to bring one of them to life. The experience I got of a wide range of activities and tasks that are part of different user-centred design disciplines helped to keep an open door for my future professional life. I believe I can apply for other roles if I would like to try anything different to service design, for instance, user research, product design or user experience /interaction design. I feel like I gained basic knowledge and skills based on a double diamond approach. I use that approach and some learnt design methods and design thinking in my job. There is more to it, though, like working with business analysts, product owners, Agile approach, etc., and I wish I were aware of it while I was studying as it would help me with my confidence when I started working at the