May 1, 2025

Ti Chang readily describes her experience as an undergraduate industrial design major at Georgia Tech as “typical.” 

She was from a small town in Georgia, had a Hope Scholarship, and was interested in learning a profession that used her artistic capacity. After graduation, she paid her designer dues at well-respected companies like Goody Products and Trek Bicycle Corporation.

What was exceptional, she said, was the human-centered design education she got.

“Georgia Tech gave me the foundation that enabled me to create products that people can connect with but also use,” Chang said.

“And this is not something that is taught at every design school. Tech’s [industrial design] curriculum is all about human-centered research. It has such depth in how you think about design for people by the people.”

Eventually, Chang built a successful brand using concepts of Universal Design and the rigor of research which she learned at Georgia Tech. But first, a career crisis and a global recession had to happen.

“I did my time working for other companies, learning how to be an in-house designer, an industrial designer, and working in manufacturing. I had the experience of going overseas, to China, to Europe. I got to see cottage industries,” she said.

“And so having all those experiences, I started to get a better feel of what areas of industrial design I liked and what I didn't. I have a specific lens on life—I can only work on things that I'm very interested in, or just not at all. I think that's part of the high functioning autism in me.”

So she put her designer career on pause and went back to school. She earned an M.A. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London. It was there that she started to, “better understand products from a more emotional and conceptual point of view. I was able to bring that into how I practice industrial design,” she said.

Right after she graduated from the Royal College of Art, the 2008 recession hit.

“I couldn't find any work, or at least any work that I found interesting. So I allowed myself to think about what products would I be interested in,” she said. “And that's when I had the idea: pleasure is hugely important. As human beings, our natural tendency is that we seek pleasure. It’s our birthright, whether or not we consciously allow ourselves to do so.”

Next, she designed an elegant necklace that also serves an intimate wellness function. It looks like high end jewelry and is an object that people can wear in public, which can symbolize something very personal, she said.

“I wanted something beautiful. I wanted something that didn't make me feel icky,” Chang said. With this idea she established the concept of her brand: products that are designed responsibly and with technical expertise that also trigger emotion and are beautiful.

“I think pleasure jewelry is beautiful. It's edgy, it is provocative. It's a conversation starter that helps people to talk about something awkward that they otherwise have trouble talking about.”

“The thing about senses and pleasure and what people feel is that it is just so different and so personal,” Chang said. “What I can do as a designer is to create products that I hope create an emotional experience for them, that they find important. That's kind of magic.”

Product design can influence consumers' feelings about objects, she said. “I think there's a language of objects that makes people think, ‘OK, this is utilitarian’, or, ‘this is special.’”

For example, Chang points to purpose-driven accessibility products made specifically for the disabled community as firmly on the utilitarian end of the Universal Design spectrum. As a result, she said, these life-changing products are often designed with aesthetics as a last priority. And it means that the people who rely on those products get less beauty and emotional value out of them.

“Universal Design is this idea that in school I fully embraced,” Chang said. “It's trying to make sure that what you design works for more people than just a narrow part of the population.”

“What I found with Universal Design is that if you try to design for that small percentage of people on either end of the spectrum, you will learn things that you otherwise would have missed. And if you can bring that into your design, you actually make your design a little more accessible to more people.”

Chang took Universal Design one step further, and has built a successful career on a fundamental observation.

“I think there is an opportunity to take useful products to another level, where it is something even more beautiful, that is just seamlessly incorporated into consumers’ lives, “ she said.  “Here is where I think Universal Design falls down.”

“A good product doesn't have to work for every single person. It just has to work very well for certain people. As a designer, you have to know that and align your company in that way to be commercially viable.

Chang sold her necklace design in 2010 and became Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of CRAVE. Since then, her work in the niche pleasure jewelry industry has been influential with mainstream product designers.

As wellness and design continue to converge in mainstream retail, Chang likewise sells her products in outlets like Goop and Ulta Beauty. She’s collaborated with Nordstrom and Saint Laurent. She’s won international design awards. Newsstand magazines such as Wired, Fast Company, Cosmopolitan, Refinery 29, Marie Claire, Vogue, and Women’s Health Magazine report on her work. 

She's a leader in the Industrial Designers Society of America, having been Chair of the San Francisco Chapter and Vice Chair of the Women in Design section. When fellow industrial designers ask her advice, she tells them that designing products for people's utilitarian and aesthetic needs can be lucrative and fulfilling work.

“Designers have an opportunity to find what resonates in their soul, what they want, what they have a burning desire to see in the world. Take that idea out, put it through the rigor of industrial design, get user tested, iterate. And from that, you can have something that you are proud of and most likely it'll resonate with other people too,” she said.

“I think that's the exciting frontier of design, and I think for us to get there, we need to have better language around emotions, around beauty, around feelings and emotional needs that people have, because ultimately people buy through emotion. That's how people purchase.”